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WALTER SCOTT. (1808). 
Painted by Sir H. Raeburn. 



LIFE 



SIB WALTEB SCOTT 



BY 



J. 5 G. LOCKHART 



WITH 



PREFATORY LETTER BY J.- R. HOPE SCOTT 



NEW YORK: 46 East 14th Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street 

C I <*1- ? 



By Hxohanpe 
May 27, 1929 



PIT 5 33 Z 
1^70 



u 



Arundel Castle, 
April 10, 1871. 



My dear Gladstone, 



Although our friendship has endured for many years, and has 
survived great changes, it is not on account of my affection for you 
that I have desired to connect these lines with your name. It is 
because from you, more than from any one who is now alive, I have 
received assurances of that strong and deep admiration of Walter 
Scott, both as an author and as a man, which I have long felt myself, 
and which I heartily agree with you in wishing to extend and to 
perpetuate. On my part, such a desire might on other grounds be 
natural; on yours, it can only spring from the conviction, which I 
know you entertain, that both the writings and the personal history 
of that extraordinary man, while affording entertainment of the 
purest kind, and supplying stores of information which can nowhere 
else be so pleasantly acquired, have in them a great deal which no 
student of human nature ought to neglect, and much also which those 
who engage in the struggle of life with high purposes — men who are 
prepared to work earnestly, and to endure nobly — cannot pass by 
without loss. 

This, then, is my object in addressing you. I wish, after the 
manner of my profession, to call the best witness I can find, and by 
the weight alike of your authority and of your example to revive and 
strengthen a taste which, to the no small discredit of a portion, and 
that not the least educated, of our modern society, appears to need 
encouragement. 

It was in the autumn of 1868, when you were on the eve of a great 
enterprise, and with care and labour enough on your hands to weigh 
down a spirit which possessed less of Scott's own energy, that you 
wrote to me : — 

"With great delight, and under fascination, I have been treading 
(in mind) much ground familiar to you, and have been upon a regular 
perusal of Lockhart's < Life of Scott,' from end to end. I am already 
reflecting with concern how soon I shall probably read the last page 
of the last volume." 



IV PREFATORY LETTER. 

It was at that time too that you concluded a letter on the absorbing 
topics of the day, by saying : — 

"I wish I had time to write about the ' Life of Scott.' I may be 
wrong, but I am vaguely under the impression that it has never had 
a really wide circulation. 1 If so, it is the saddest pity : and I should 
greatly like (without any censure on its present length) to see published 
an abbreviation of it." 

To the suggestion made in the last extract, I paid, as I was bound 
to do, immediate attention ; but, misled, not by your intimation, but 
by some from other quarters, I began by supposing that what the 
public needed was a wholly new work ; and being unable to attempt 
this myself, and, at the same time, being jealous of intrusting it to 
less reverent, even though more skilful, hands, I found it difficult to 
proceed. 

One eminent man, to whom I proposed the work combined all the 
qualifications which I could desire, but his own pursuits prevented 
him from undertaking it ; and, after his refusal, the prospect of a new 
Life, such as alone I could have wished to see published, became 
gradually more uncertain. 

But while thus engaged, I learnt, with great surprise, how little 
Lockhart's own abridgment of the larger Life, published in 1818, and 
here reprinted, was known, even among professed admirers of Scott. 
The charms of the original work appear to have hindered its progress 
from the first, and to have justified Lockhart's unwillingness to under- 
take it. 2 I found that it was unknown to you, and that the able 
writer of an article which appeared in the Quarterly Review of January 
1868, seemed also to have been ignorant of it, for he refers to the 
"veil of mystery" which Lockhart had thrown over the story of 
Scott's first and unsuccessful love, and which, while denying its neces- 
sity, he declines to withdraw; yet in this abridgment the names of 
the lady and of her eventual husband are both fully given (p. 49). 

This circumstance, and a further consideration of the subject, led 
me to abandon altogether the idea of a new Life. Lockhart had a 
personal familiarity with his subject, and the command of a mass of 
materials such as cannot fall to the share of any other writer ; and 
therefore, even if his mode of dealing with his subject were less 
admirable than it confessedly is, his larger work would, of necessity, 
form the foundation of any fresh attempt. But when we examine 

1 Between 1S37 and 1S56 there were sold, of all the editions, 33,900 copies. Between 
1S56 and 1871, only 1900. 

2 See the preface to this volume. 



PREFATORY LETTER. V 

that work, and observe the skill of its construction, its wonderful 
diction, and the glow of feeling which pervades it, the conclusion 
seems inevitable that any effort, worthy of the name, must take the 
form either of a review or of an abridgment of this great model of 
biography. 

But as regards a review, the Quarterly has within a few years 
furnished, in the article above mentioned, nearly all that could be 
desired; and, for a good abridgment, conditions are required which 
scarcely any one but the author himself can properly fulfil. 

A work of art in writing is subject to the same rules as one in 
painting or in architecture. Those who seek to represent it in a 
reduced form, must, above all things, study its proportions, and make 
their reduction equal over all its parts. But in the case of written 
composition there are no mechanical appliances, as there are in paint- 
ing and architecture, for varying the scale, and there is, moreover, a 
greater difficulty in catching the leading principle of the design, and 
thus establishing the starting-point for the process which is to follow. 

Hence an abridgment by the author himself must necessarily be 
the best, indeed the only true abridgment of what he has intended in 
his larger work ; and I deem it a very fortunate thing that Cadell's 
influence overcame Lockhart's repugnance to the task. 

These, then, are my reasons for proposing to the public, as the 
best of all the easier modes of studying the life of Scott, the cheap and 
convenient reprint to which this letter is prefixed. Nor is it an objec- 
tion, to my mind, that it is the work of one who grudged to shorten, 
and wished rather to extend ; for, though many of those for whom 
Lockhart wrote have passed, or are passing, from the scene, and much 
of the private interest which attended Scott's manifold relations with 
almost every class of his contemporaries must by degrees die out, there 
is an abiding reason why Scott's personal history should not be too 
freely generalised, and an abstract notion be substituted for the real 
man. 

When Keble, himself a true admirer of Scott, seeks to restrain 
unquiet minds by telling them that — 

" The trivial round, the common task," 

afford ample means for attaining to Christian perfection, he points to 
a rule of life which it is most difficult to observe, whether in the 
pursuit of holiness or in the exercise of natural gifts. But in Scott, if 
in any man, what was remarkable was the sustained and continuous 



VI PREFATORY LETTER. 

force of his character. It is to be traced in the smallest things as 
well as in the greatest, in his daily habits as much as in his public 
actions, in his fancies and follies as well as in his best and wisest 
doings. Everywhere we find the same power of imagination, and the 
same energy of will ; and though it has been said that " no man is a 
hero to his valet de chambre" I am satisfied that Scott's most familiar 
attendant never doubted his greatness, or looked upon him with less 
respect than those who judged him as he stood forth amidst the 
homage of the world. 

In dealing with such a character, it is hardly necessary to say that 
the omission of details becomes, after a certain point, a serious injury 
to the truth of the whole portrait ; and if any man should object that 
this volume is not short enough, I should be tempted to answer, that 
if he reads by foot-rule, he had better not think of studying, in any 
shape, the life of Walter Scott. 

But besides the reduction of bulk, by which eighty-four chapters 
have been compressed into eighteen, this edition has other claims 
upon attention. The larger Life, which was first published in seven 
volumes in 1837-8, was succeeded by one in ten volumes in 1839, and 
by another in one volume, with double columns, in 1842 ; but though 
both the latter were entered at Stationers' Hall as new editions " with 
alterations," and did, in fact, each differ, in some respects, from the 
original edition, and from each other, yet Lockhart did not think the 
changes worthy of a public notice, and the preface of the edition of 
1837-8 was published, unaltered, with the two later editions. But the 
preface of the abridgment of 1848 intimates changes arising from 
later information, and the book itself more than bears out this 
promise. Time and death had been at work in the interval, and to 
these causes we owe some alterations and additions of interest. One 
of these I have already mentioned, and I cannot refrain from recom- 
mending to special notice the touching memorials of Scott's two 
sons, Walter and Charles, which occur towards the conclusion of this 
volume. 

Those who read them will see new proofs of that depth and tender- 
ness of feeling which Lockhart, in daily life, so often hid under an 
almost fierce reserve, and will be able to form some idea — though, 
after all, it can be but a very faint one — of what he suffered on the 
death of his surviving son. 

They may imagine too how much he was spared by dying before 
his only daughter — that daughter whose singular likeness to her 



PREFATORY LETTER. Vll 

mother must have continually recalled to him both the features and 
the character of her of whom he wrote — 

" She whom I may now sadly record as, next to Sir Walter himself, 
the chief ornament and delight at all those simple meetings — she to 
whom I owed my own place in them — Scott's eldest daughter, the 
one of all his children who, in countenance, mind, and manners, most 
resembled himself, and who indeed was as like him in all things as a 
gentle innocent woman can ever be to a great man deeply tried and 
skilled in the struggles and perplexities of active life — she too is no 
more." 1 

As regards the preparation of this reprint, I have not been able to 
do what I had proposed. It was my intention to have revised the 
text, and to have added notes ; but, as the time which I had destined 
for this work drew near, it pleased God suddenly to stay my hand, 
and so to occupy my thoughts that even this easy task became impos- 
sible to me. With the exception, therefore, of the change of form 
from two volumes to one, and of the addition 2 of a short and melan- 
choly notice, which it seemed impossible to withhold, this narrative 
goes forth as Lockhart left it; and since I am sure that I could not 
have added to its substantial interest without unduly increasing its 
bulk, I feel but little regret that my intention failed. 

And now, my dear Gladstone, Vive valeque. You have already 
earned a noble place in the history of your country, and, though there 
is one great subject on which we differ, I am able heartily to desire 
that your future career may be as distinguished as your past. But 
since it is only too certain that the highest honours of statesmanship 
can neither be won nor held without exertions which are full of 
danger to those who make them, I will add the further wish, that you 
may long retain, as safeguards to your health, your happiness, and 
your usefulness, that fresh and versatile spirit, and that strong sense 
of the true and the beautiful, which have caused you to be addressed 
on this occasion by 

Your affectionate friend, 

JAMES R. HOPE SCOTT. 

The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 
&c. &c. 

1 See Chapter liv. of the larger biography. "Who but Lockhart himself would have dared 
to reduce this passage to the monumental terseness of the two lines which occur at p. 623 
of this abridgment ? 

2 See the footnote to page 625. 



PREFACE. 



The closing pages of this book will explain the transaction from 
which it sprang. When in May 1847 the publisher of Sir Walter 
Scott's Works proposed to take to himself the whole remaining Copy- 
right in them, he stipulated that I should prepare an abridgment of 
the Memoirs of the Author, originally comprised in seven volumes, 
and since reprinted in various forms. If I had been to consult my 
own feelings, I should have been more willing to produce an enlarged 
edition : for the interest of Sir Walter's history lies, I think, even 
peculiarly, in its minute details — especially in the details set down 
by himself in his Letters and Diaries : and, of course, after the lapse 
of ten years, more copious use might be made of those materials with- 
out offence or indecorum. Mr. Cadell, however, considered that a 
book of smaller bulk, embracing only what may be called more strictly 
narrative, might be acceptable to certain classes of readers : and the 
manner in which this gentleman had throughout conducted himself 
towards Sir Walter, his family, and his memory — together with other 
circumstances on which it is not necessary to say more — overcame 
my reluctance. 

It will be understood that whenever the narrative now given at all 
differs from that of the larger book, I have been endeavouring to 
profit by letters recently communicated. 

J. G. LOCKHART. 

London, 4th August 1848. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Memoir of Sir Walter Scott's early tears, written by 

HIMSELF 1 

CHAPTER II. 

Call to the Bar — Early Friendships and Pursuits — Excursions to 
the Highlands and Border — Light-Horse Volunteers — Dis- 
appointment in Love — Publication of Ballads after Burger. 
1792-1797 44 

CHAPTER III. 

Tour to the English Lakes — Miss Carpenter — Marriage — Lass- 
wade Cottage — Original Ballads — Monk Lewis — Goetz of 
Berlichingen — John Leyden — James Hogg — James Ballan- 
tyne — Sheriffship of Selkirk — Publication of the Minstrelsy 
of the Border. 1797-1803 . . 75 

CHAPTER IV. 

Contributions to the Edinburgh Review — Wordsworth — Hogg — 
Sir Tristrem — Removal to Ashestiel — Mungo Park — Publica- 
tion of the Lay of the Last Minstrel — Partnership with James 
Ballantyne — Visit to London — Appointment as Clerk of Ses- 
sion. 1804-1806 108 

CHAPTER V. 

Marmion — Edition of Dryden, &c. — Morritt — Domestic Life — 
Quarrel with Constable & Co. — John Ballantyne started as a 
Publisher — The Quarterly Review begun. 1806-1809 . . 150 

xi 



xii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

London — Theatrical Anecdotes — Byron's Satire — The Lady of 
the Lake — Excursion to the Hebrides — Vision of Don Rod- 
erick — Byron — Davy — Crabbe — Purchase of Abbotsford. 
1809-1812 189 

CHAPTER VII. 

Publication of Rokeby and the Bridal of Triermain — Commercial 
Difficulties — Reconciliation with Constable — Death of Weber 

— Voyage to the Shetland, Orkney, and Hebridean Islands — 
Publication of the Life and Works of Swift — and of Waverley. 
1812-1814 . 216 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Publication of the Lord of the Isles and Guy Manneriug — Meeting 
with Byron — Carlton House Dinner — Excursion to Paris — 
Publication of the Field of Waterloo — Paul's Letters — The 
Antiquary — Harold the Dauntless — and the first Tales of my 
Landlord. 1815-1816 246 

CHAPTER IX. 

Serious Illness — Laidlaw settled at Kaeside, and the Fergussons at 
Huntley Burn — New House begun — Washington Irving — 
Publication of Rob Roy — and the Heart of Mid-Lothian — Scott 
in Edinburgh. 1817-1818 282 

CHAPTER X. 

Sketches of Abbotsford — Illness and Domestic Afflictions — The 
Bride of Lammermoor — The Legend of Montrose — Ivanhoe. 
1818-1819 319 

CHAPTER XL 

Scott's Baronetcy — Portrait by Lawrence and Bust by Chantrey 

— Presidency of the Royal Society of Edinburgh — Hospitali- 
ties and Sports at Abbotsford — Publication of The Monastery 

— The Abbot — and Kenilworth. 1820 356 



CONTENTS. Xlll 



CHAPTER XII. 

PAGE 

Death of John Ballantyne — and William Erskine — George IV. at 
Edinburgh — Visits of Mr. Crabbe and Miss Edgeworth — 
Reminiscences by Mr. Adolphus — Publication of Lives of the 
Novelists — Halidon Hill — The Pirate — The Fortunes of Nigel 
— Peveril of the Peak — Quentin Durward — and St. Ronan's 
Well. 1821-1823 379 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Publication of Redgauntlet — Abbotsf orcl completed — Marriage of 
Captain Scott — Constable's Miscellany projected — Life Of 
Napoleon begun — Tales of the Crusaders published — Tour in 
Ireland — Visit to Windermere — Moore at Abbotsf ord — Ru- 
mours of Evil among the Booksellers. 1824-1825 . . . 431 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Ruin of the Houses of Constable and Ballantyne — Death of Lady 
Scott — Publication of Woodstock — Journey to London and 
Paris — Publication of the Life of Napoleon. 1825-1827 . . 472 



CHAPTER XV. 

Death of Constable — Controversy with Gourgaud — Excursion to 
Durham — Publication of the Chronicles of the Canongate and 
Tales of a Grandfather — Religious Discourses — Fair Maid of 
Perth — Anne of Geierstein — Threatening of Apoplexy — 
Death of Thomas Purdie. 1827-1829 514 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Publication of the Ayrshire Tragedy, Letters on Demonology, 
Tales on the History of France, &c. — Apoplectic Seizure — 
Retirement from the Court of Session — Offers of a Pension 
and of Additional Rank declined — Count Robert of Paris 
begun — Death of George IV. — Political Commotions — Fourth 
Epistle of Malagrowther — Speech on Reform at Jedburgh. 
1830-1831 547 



XIV CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PAGE 

Apoplectic Paralysis — Miss Ferrier — Election Scenes at Jedburgh 
and Selkirk — Castle Dangerous begun — Excursion to Douglas- 
dale — Visits of Captain Burns and Wordsworth — Departure 
from Abbotsford— London — Voyage in the Barharn — Malta 
— Naples — Rome — Notes by Mrs. Davy, Sir W. Gell, and Mr. 
E. Cheney — Publication of the last Tales of my Landlord. 
1831-1832 567 



CHAPTER XVILT. 

Return to England — Seizure at Nimeguen — Jermyn Street, Lon- 
don — Edinburgh — Abbotsford — Death and Euneral of Scott 
in September 1832 — His Character — Monuments to his Mem- 
ory — Pictures, Busts, and Statues 596 

Index 633 



LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



CHAPTER I. 

MEMOIR OF HIS EARLY YEARS, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. 

Ashestiel, April 26th, 1808. 
The present age. has discovered a desire, or rather a rage, 
for literary anecdote and private history, that may be well 
permitted to alarm one who has engaged in a certain degree 
the attention of the public. That I have had more than my 
own share of popularity, my contemporaries will be as ready 
to admit as I am to confess that its measure has exceeded not 
only my hopes, but my merits, and even wishes. I may be 
- therefore permitted, without an extraordinary degree of vanity, 
to take the precaution of recording a few leading circumstances 
(they do not merit the name of events) of a very quiet and 
uniform life — that, should my literary reputation survive my 
temporal existence, the public may know from good authority 
all that they are entitled to know of an individual who has 
contributed to their amusement. 

.From the lives of some poets a most important moral lesson 
may doubtless be derived, and few sermons can be read with 
so much profit as the Memoirs of Burns, of Chatterton, or of 
Savage. Were I conscious of anything peculiar in my own 
moral character which could render such developement neces- 
sary or useful, I would as readily consent to it as I would 
bequeath my body to dissection, if the operation could tend to 
point out the nature and the means of curing any peculiar 
malady. But as my habits of thinking and acting, as well as 
my rank in society, were fixed long before I had attained, or 
even pretended to, any poetical reputation, 1 and as it produced, 

1 1 do not mean to say that my success in literature has not led me to 
mix familiarly in society much above my birth and original pretensions, 
since I have been readily received in the first circles in Britain. But 
there is a certain intuitive knowledge of the world, to which most well- 

B 1 



2 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

when acquired, no remarkable change upon either, it is hardly 
to be expected that much information can be derived from 
minutely investigating frailties, follies, or vices, not very 
different in number or degree from those of other men in my 
situation. As I have not been blessed with the talents of 
Burns or Chatterton, I have been happily exempted from the 
influence of their violent passions, exasperated by the struggle 
of feelings which rose up against the unjust decrees of fortune. 
Yet, although I cannot tell of difficulties vanquished, and 
distance of rank annihilated by the strength of genius, those 
who shall hereafter read this little Memoir may find in it some 
hints to be improved, for the regulation of their own minds, or 
the training those of others. 

Every Scottishman has a pedigree. It is a national prerog- 
ative, as unalienable as his pride and his poverty. My birth 
was neither distinguished nor sordid. According to the preju- 
dices of my country, it was esteemed gentle, as I was connected, 
though remotely, with ancient families both by my father's 
and mother's side. My father's grandfather was Walter Scott, 
well known in Teviotdale by the surname of Beard ie. He was 
the second son of Walter Scott, first Laird of Eaeburn, who 
was third son of Sir William Scott, and the grandson of Walter 
Scott, commonly called in tradition Auld Watt of Harden. I am 
therefore lineally descended from that ancient chieftain, whose 
name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair dame, 
the Flower of Yarrow — no bad genealogy for a Border minstrel. 1 
Beardie, my great-grandfather aforesaid, derived his cognomen 
from a venerable beard, which he wore unblemished by razor or 
scissors, in token of his regret for the banished dynasty of Stuart. 
It would have been well that his zeal had stopped there. But he 

educated Scotchmen are early trained, that prevents them from being 
much dazzled by this species of elevation. A man who to good nature 
adds the general rudiments of good breeding, provided he rest contented 
with a simple and unaffected manner of behaving and expressing himself, 
will never be ridiculous in the best society, and, so far as his talents and 
information permit, may be an agreeable part of the company. I have 
therefore never felt much elevated, nor did I experience any violent 
change in situation, by the passport which my poetical character afforded 
me into higher company than my birth warranted. — 1826. 

1 [In whom the male representation of the old Scotts of Buccleuch is 
now vested, there is great dispute among heraldic writers, — some 
upholding the claim of Lord Napier, the male heir of the Scotts of Thirl- 
estane, — others that of Lord Polwarth, head of what was always con- 
sidered, in point of importance, the second family of the clan, viz., the 
Scotts of Harden, originally designed Scotts of Sinton. Of his ancestors 
of this branch, Sir Walter has recorded many anecdotes in the notes to 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 3 

took arms, and intrigued in their cause, until he lost all he had 
in the world, and, as I have heard, run a narrow risk of being 
hanged, had it not been for the interference of Anne, Duchess 
of Buccleuch and Monmouth. Beardie's elder brother, William 
Scott of Raeburn, my great-granduncle, was killed about the 
age of twenty-one, in a duel with Pringle of Crichton, grand- 
father of the present Mark Pringle of Clifton. They fought 
with swords, as was the fashion of the time, in a field near 
Selkirk, called from the catastrophe the Raeburn Meadowspot. 
Pringle fled from Scotland to Spain, and was long a captive 
and slave in Barbary. Beardie became, of course, Tutor of 
Raeburn, as the old Scottish phrase called him — that is, 
guardian to his infant nephew, father of the present Walter 
Scott of Raeburn. He also managed the estates of Makerstoun, 
being nearly related to that family by his mother, Isobel 
MacDougal. I suppose he had some allowance for his care in 
either case, and subsisted upon that and the fortune which he 
had by his wife, a Miss Campbell of Silvercraigs, in the west, 
through which connexion my father used to call cousin, as they 
say, with the Campbells of Blythswood. Beardie was a man 
of some learning, and a friend of Dr. Pitcairn, to whom his 
politics probably made him acceptable. They had a Tory or 
Jacobite club in Edinburgh, in which the conversation is said 
to have been maintained in Latin. 

the Border Minstrelsy, the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and elsewhere. In 
conversation he often alluded to the remarkable circumstance of two of 
them having been lame, and, nevertheless, both especially distinguished 
by the old rhythmical chronicler of the clan, Scott of Satchells (1688), 
who says of the first, — 

" It is four hundred winters passed in order 
Since that Buccleuch was Warden in the Border ; 
A son he had at that same tide, 
Which was so lame could neither run nor ride. 
John, this lame, if my author speaks true, 
He sent him to St. Mungo's in Glasgu, 
Where he remained a scholar's time, 
Then he married a wife according to his mind. . . . 
And betwixt them twa they did procreat 
Ileadshaw, Askirk, Sinton, and Glack." 

But, if the scholarship of John the Lamiter furnished his descendant 
With many a mirthful allusion, a far greater favourite was the memory 
of William the Boltfoot, who followed him in the sixth generation. 

" The Laird and Lady of Harden 
Betwixt them procreat was a son 
Called William Boltfoot of Harden — 
lie did survive to be a man." 

He was, in fact, one of the "pro west knights" of the whole genealogy — 
a fearless horseman and expert spearsman, renowned and dreaded. — Ed.] 



4 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

He left three sons. The eldest, Walter, had a family, of 
which any that now remain have been long settled in America : 
— the male heirs are long since extinct. The third was Wil- 
liam, father of James Scott, well known in India as one of the 
original settlers of Prince of Wales island. The second, Robert 
Scott, was my grandfather. He was originally bred to the sea ; 
but, being shipwrecked near Dundee in his trial-voyage, he 
took such a sincere dislike to that element, that he could not 
be persuaded to a second attempt. This occasioned a quarrel 
between him and his father, who left him to shift for himself. 
Robert was one of those active spirits to whom this was no 
misfortune. He turned Whig upon the spot, and fairly abjured 
his father's politics, and his learned poverty. His chief and 
relative, Mr. Scott of Harden, gave him a lease of the farm of 
Sandy-Knowe, comprehending the rocks in the centre of which 
Smailholm or Sandy-Knowe Tower is situated. He took for 
his shepherd an old man called Hogg, who willingly lent him, 
out of respect to his family, his whole savings, about £30, to 
stock the new farm. With this sum, which it seems was at the 
time sufficient for the purpose, the master and servant set off 
to purchase a stock of sheep at Whitsun-Tryste, a fair held on 
a hill near Wooler in Northumberland. The old shepherd went 
carefully from drove to drove, till he found a MrseJ likely to 
answer their purpose, and then returned to tell his master to come 
up and conclude the bargain. But what was his surprise to see 
him galloping a mettled hunter about the race-course, and to 
find he had expended the whole stock in this extraordinary 
purchase ! — Moses's bargain of green spectacles did not strike 
more dismay into the Vicar of Wakefield's family, than my 
grandfather's rashness into the poor old shepherd. The thing, 
however, was irretrievable, and they returned without the sheep. 
In the course of a few days, however, my grandfather, who was 
one of the best horsemen of his time, attended John Scott of 
Harden's hounds on this same horse, and displayed him to 
such advantage that he sold him for double the original price. 
The farm was now stocked in earnest; and the rest of my 
grandfather's career was that of successful industry. He was 
one of the first who were active in the cattle trade, afterwards 
carried to such extent between the Highlands of Scotland 
and the leading counties in England, and by his droving trans- 
actions acquired a considerable sum of money. He was a man 
of middle stature, extremely active, quick, keen, and fiery in 
his temper, stubbornly honest, and so distinguished for his 
skill in country matters, that he was the general referee in all 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 5 

points of dispute which, occurred in the neighbourhood. His 
birth being admitted as gentle, gave him access to the best 
society in the county, and his dexterity in country sports, 
particularly hunting, made him an acceptable companion in the 
field as well as at the table. 1 

Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe married, in 1728, Barbara 
Haliburton, daughter of Thomas Haliburton of ISTewmains, an 
ancient and respectable family in Berwickshire. Among other 
patrimonial possessions, they enjoyed the part of Dry burgh, 
now the property of the Earl of Buchan, comprehending the 
ruins of the Abbey. My granduncle, Robert Haliburton, having 
no male heirs, this estate, as well as the representation of the 
family, would have devolved upon my father, and indeed Old 
Newmains had settled it upon him ; but this was prevented by 
the misfortunes of my granduncle, a weak silly man, who en- 
gaged in trade, for which he had neither stock nor talents, and 
became bankrupt. The ancient patrimony was sold for a trifle 
(about £3000), and my father, who might have purchased it 
with, ease, was dissuaded by my grandfather, who at that time 
believed a more advantageous purchase might have been made 
of some lands which Raeburn thought of selling. And thus 
we have nothing left of Dryburgh, although my father's 
maternal inheritance, but the right of stretching our bones 
where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my own 
glances over these pages. 

Walter Scott, my father, was born in 1729, and educated to 
the profession of a Writer to the Signet. He was the eldest 
of a large family, several of whom I shall have occasion to 
mention with a tribute of sincere gratitude. My father was a 
singular instance of a man rising to eminence in a profession 
for which nature had in some degree unfitted him. He had 
indeed a turn for labour, and a pleasure in analysing the 
abstruse feudal doctrines connected with conveyancing, which 
would probably have rendered him unrivalled in the line of a 
special pleader, had there been such a profession in Scotland ; 
but in the actual business of the profession which he embraced, 
in that sharp and intuitive perception which is necessary in 
driving bargains for himself and others, in availing himself of 
the wants, necessities, caprices, and follies of some, and guard- 
ing against the knavery and malice of others, Uncle Toby him- 
self could not have conducted himself with more simplicity than 

1 The present Lord Haddington, and other gentlemen conversant with 
the south country, remember my grandfather well. He was a fine alert 
figure, and wore a jockey cap over his grey hair. — 1826. 



6 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

my father. Most attorneys have been suspected, more or less 
justly, of making their own fortune at the expense of their clients 
— my father's fate was to vindicate his calling from the stain in 
one instance, for in many cases his clients contrived to ease him 
of considerable sums. Many worshipful and be-knighted names 
occur to my memory, who did him the honour to run in his debt 
to the amount of thousands, and to pay him with a lawsuit, or 
a commission of bankruptcy, as the case happened. But they 
are gone to a different accounting, and it would be ungenerous 
to visit their disgrace upon their descendants. My father was 
wont also to give openings, to those who were pleased to take 
them, to pick a quarrel with him. He had a zeal for his clients 
which was almost ludicrous : far from coldly discharging the 
duties of his employment towards them, he thought for them, 
felt for their honour as for his own, and rather risked dis- 
obliging them than neglecting anything to which he conceived 
their duty bound them. If there was an old mother or aunt to 
be maintained, he was, I am afraid, too apt to administer to 
their necessities from what the young heir had destined ex- 
clusively to his pleasures. This ready discharge of obligations 
which the Civilians tell us are only natural and not legal, did 
not, I fear, recommend him to his employers. Yet his practice 
was, at one period of his life, very extensive. He understood 
his business theoretically, and was early introduced to it by a 
partnership with George Chalmers, Writer to the Signet, under 
whom he had served his apprenticeship. 

His person and face were uncommonly handsome, with an 
expression of sweetness of temper, which was not fallacious ; 
his manners were rather formal, but full of genuine kindness, 
especially when exercising the duties of hospitality. His general 
habits were not only temperate, but severely abstemious ; but 
upon a festival occasion, there were few whom a moderate glass 
of wine exhilarated to such a lively degree. His religion, in 
which he was devoutly sincere, was Calvinism of the strictest 
kind, and his favourite study related to church history. I 
suspect the good old man was often engaged with Knox and 
Spottiswoode's folios, when, immured in his solitary room, he 
was supposed to be immersed in professional researches. In 
his political principles he was a steady friend to freedom, with 
a bias, however, to the monarchical part of our constitution, 
which he considered as peculiarly exposed to danger during the 
later years of his life. He had much of ancient Scottish 
prejudice respecting the forms of marriages, funerals, christen- 
ings, and so forth, and was always vexed at any neglect of 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 7 

etiquette upon such occasions. As his education had not been 
upon an enlarged plan, it could not be expected that he should 
be an enlightened scholar, but he had not passed through a 
busy life without observation ; and his remarks upon times and 
manners often exhibited strong traits of practical though un- 
taught philosophy. Let me conclude this sketch, which I am 
unconscious of having overcharged, with a few lines written by 
the late Mrs. Cockburn 1 upon the subject. They made one 
among a set of poetical characters which were given as toasts 
among a few friends, and we must hold them to contain a 
striking likeness, since the original was recognised so soon as 
they were read aloud : — 

" To a thing that's uncommon — a youth of discretion, 
Who, though vastly handsome, despises flirtation : 
To the friend in affliction, the heart of affection, 
Who may hear the last trump without dread of detection." 

In April 1758, my father married Anne Rutherford, eldest 
daughter of Dr. John Rutherford, professor of medicine in the 
University of Edinburgh. He was one of those pupils of 
Boerhaave, to whom the school of medicine in our northern 
metropolis owes its rise, and a man distinguished for profes- 
sional talent, for lively Avit, and for literary acquirements. 
Dr. Rutherford was twice married. His first wife, of whom 
my mother is the sole surviving child, was a daughter of Sir 
John Swinton of Swinton, a family which produced many 
distinguished warriors during the middle ages, and which, for 
antiquity and honourable alliances, may rank with any in 
Britain. My grandfather's second wife was Miss Mackay, by 
whom he had a second family, of whom are now (1808) alive, 
Dr. Daniel Rutherford, professor of botany in the University 
of Edinburgh, and Misses Janet and Christian Rutherford, 
amiable and accomplished women. 

My father and mother had a very numerous family, no 
fewer, I believe, than twelve children, of whom many were 
highly promising, though only five survived very early youth. 
My eldest brother Robert was bred in the King's service, and 
was in most of Rodney's battles. His temper was bold and 
haughty, and to me was often checkered with what I felt to 
be capricious tyranny. In other respects I loved him much, 

1 Mrs. Cockburn (born Miss Rutherford of Fairnalie) was the authoress 
of the beautiful song — 

" I have seen the smiling 
Of fortune beguiling." 



8 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

for lie had a strong turn for literature, read poetry with, taste 
and judgment, and composed verses himself, which had gained 
him great applause among his messmates. Witness the fol- 
lowing elegy upon the supposed loss of the vessel, composed 
the night before Rodney's celebrated battle of April the 12th, 
1782. It alludes to the various amusements of his mess : — 

" No more the geese shall cackle on the poop, 

No more the bagpipe through the orlop sound, 
No more the midshipmen, a jovial group, 

Shall toast the girls, and push the bottle round. 
In death's dark road at anchor fast they stay, 

Till Heaven's loud signal shall in thunder roar ; 
Then starting up, all hands shall quick obey, 

Sheet home the topsail, and with speed unmoor." 

Robert sung agreeably — (a virtue which was never seen in 
me) — understood the mechanical arts, and when in good 
humour, could regale us with many a tale of bold adventure 
and narrow escapes. When in bad humour, however, he gave 
us a practical taste of what was then man-of-war's discipline, 
and kicked and cuffed without mercy. I have often thought 
how he might have distinguished himself had he continued in 
the navy until the present times, so glorious for nautical 
exploit. But the peace of 1783 cut off all hopes of promotion 
for those who had not great interest ; and some disgust which 
his proud spirit had taken at harsh usage from a superior 
officer, combined to throw poor Robert into the East India 
Company's service, for which his habits were ill adapted. He 
made two voyages to the East, and died a victim to the 
climate. 

John Scott, my second brother, is about three years older 
than me. He addicted himself to the military service, and is 
now brevet-major in the 73d regiment. 3 

I had an only sister, Anne Scott, who seemed to be from 
her cradle the butt for mischance to shoot arrows at. Her 
childhood was marked by perilous escapes from the most 
extraordinary accidents. Among others, I remember an iron- 
railed door leading into the area in the centre of George's 
Square being closed by the wind, while her fingers were 
betwixt the hasp and staple. Her hand was thus locked in, 

1 He was this year made major of the second battalion by the kind inter- 
cession of Mr. Canning at the War-Office — 1809. He retired frcm the 
army, and kept house with my mother. His health was totally broken, 
and he died, yet a young man, on 8th May 1816. — 1826. 



A UTOBIOGBA PHY. 9 

and must have been smashed to pieces, had not the bones of 
her fingers been remarkably slight and thin. As it was, the 
hand was cruelly mangled. On another occasion, she was 
nearly drowned in a pond, or old quarry-hole, in what was 
then called Brown's Park, on the south side of the square. 
But the most unfortunate accident, and which, though it 
happened while she was only six years old, proved the remote 
cause of her death, was her cap accidentally taking fire. The 
child was alone in the room, and before assistance could be 
obtained, her head was dreadfully scorched. After a lingering 
and dangerous illness, she recovered — but never to enjoy per- 
fect health. The slightest cold occasioned swellings in her face, 
and other indications of a delicate constitution. At length 
[in 1801], poor Anne was taken ill, and died after a very 
short interval. Her temper, like that of her brothers, was 
peculiar, and in her, perhaps, it shewed more odd, from the 
habits of indulgence which her nervous illness had formed. 
But she was at heart an affectionate and kind girl, neither 
void of talent nor of feeling, though living in an ideal world 
which she had framed to herself by the force of imagination. 
Anne was my junior by about a year. 

A year lower in the list was my brother Thomas Scott, who 
is still alive. 1 

Last, and most unfortunate of our family, was my youngest 
brother, Daniel. With the same aversion to labour, or rather, 
I should say, the same determined indolence that marked us 
all, he had neither the vivacity of intellect which supplies 
the want of diligence, nor the pride which renders the most 
detested labour better than dependence or contempt. His 
career was as unfortunate as might be augured from such 
an unhappy combination ; and, after various unsuccessful 
attempts to establish himself in life, he died on his return 
from the West Indies, in July 1806. 

Having premised so much of my family, I return to my 
own story. I was born, as I believe, on the 15th August 

1 Poor Tom, a man of infinite humour and excellent parts, pursued for 
some time my father's profession ; but he was unfortunate, from engag- 
ing in speculations respecting farms and matters out of the line of his 
proper business. He afterwards became paymaster of the 70th regiment, 
and died in Canada. Tom married Elizabeth, a daughter of the family 
of M'Culloch of Ardwell, an ancient Galwegian stock, by whom he left a 
son, Walter Scott, now second lieutenant of Engineers in the East India 
Company's service, Bombay — and three daughters, Jessie, married to 
Lieutenant-Colonel Huxley; 2, Anne; 3, Eliza — the two last still un- 
married. — 1826. 



10 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

1771, in a house belonging to my father, at the head of the 
College Wynd. It was pulled down, with others, to make 
room for the northern front of the new College. I was an 
uncommonly healthy child, but had nearly died in conse- 
quence of my first nurse being ill of a consumption, a circum- 
stance which she chose to conceal, though to do so was murder 
to both herself and me. She went privately to consult Dr. 
Black, the celebrated professor of chemistry, who put my 
father on his guard. The woman was dismissed, and I was 
consigned to a healthy peasant, who is still alive to boast 
of her laddie being what she calls a grand gentleman. I 
shewed every sign of health and strength until I was about 
eighteen months old. One night, I have been often told, I 
shewed great reluctance to be caught and put to bed; and 
after being chased about the room, was apprehended and con- 
signed to my dormitory with some difficulty. It was the last 
time I was to shew such personal agility. In the morning, 
I was discovered to be affected with the fever which often 
accompanies the cutting of large teeth. It held me three days. 
On the fourth, when they went to bathe me as usual, they 
discovered that I had lost the power of my right leg. My 
grandfather, an excellent anatomist as well as physician, the 
late worthy Alexander Wood, and many others of the most 
respectable of the faculty, were consulted. There appeared to 
be no dislocation or sprain; blisters and other topical remedies 
were applied in vain. When the efforts of regular physicians 
had been exhausted, without the slightest success, my anxious 
parents, during the course of many years, eagerly grasped at 
every prospect of cure which was held out by the promise of 
empirics, or of ancient ladies or gentlemen who conceived 
themselves entitled to recommend various remedies, some of 
which were of a nature sufficiently singular. But the advice 
of my grandfather, Dr. Rutherford, that I should be sent to 
reside in the country, to give the chance of natural exertion, 
excited by free air and liberty, was first resorted to ; and 
before I have the recollection of the slightest event, I was, 
agreeably to this friendly counsel, an inmate in the farm-house 
of Sandy-Knowe. 

An odd incident is worth recording. It seems my mother 
had sent a maid to take charge of me, that I might be no 
inconvenience in the family. But the damsel sent on that 
important mission had left her heart behind her, in the keep- 
ing of some wild fellow, it is likely, who had done and said 
more to her than he was like to make good. She became 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 11 

extremely desirous to return to Edinburgh, and as my mother 
made a point of her remaining where she was, she contracted 
a sort of hatred at poor me, as the cause of her being detained 
at Sandy-Knowe. This rose, T suppose, to a sort of delirious 
affection, for she confessed to old Alison Wilson, the house- 
keeper, that she had carried me up to the Craigs, meaning, 
under a strong temptation of the Devil, to cut my throat with 
her scissors, and bury me m the moss. Alison instantly took 
possession of my person, and took care that her confidant 
should not be subject to any farther temptation, so far as I 
was concerned. She was dismissed, of course, and I have 
heard became afterwards a lunatic. 1 

1 [The epistle prefixed to the 6th canto of Marmion, contains a charm- 
ing picture of the infant poet's feelings amidst the scenery and associations 
of Smailholm Tower and Sandy-Knowe. 

" It was a barren scene and wild, 
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled," &c. &c. 

There are still (1836) living in that neighbourhood two old women, who 
were in the domestic service of Sandy-Knowe, when the lame child was 
brought thither in the third year of his age. One of them, Tibby Hunter, 
remembers his coming well; and that " he was a sweet-tempered bairn, 
a darling with all about the house." The young ewe-milkers delighted, 
she says, to carry him about on their backs among the crags ; and he was 
" very gleg (quick) at the uptake, and soon kenned every sheep and lamb 
by head-mark as well as any of them." His great pleasure, however, was 
in the society of the "aged hind" recorded in the epistle to Erskine, 
" Auld Sandy Ormiston," called, from the most dignified part of his func- 
tion, "the Cow-bailie," who had the chief superintendence of the flocks 
that browsed upon " the velvet tufts of loveliest green." If the child saw 
him in the morning, he could not be satisfied unless the old man would 
set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep him company as he 
lay watching his charge. 

" Here was poetic impulse given 
By the green hill and clear blue heaven." 

The Cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle, which signified to 
the maid servants in the house below when the little boy wished to be 
carried home again. He told his friend, Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, when 
spending a summer day in his old age among these well-remembered 
crags, that he delighted to roll about on the grass all day long in the 
midst of the flock, and that "the sort of fellowship he thus formed with 
the sheep and lambs had impressed his mind with a degree of affectionate 
feeling towards them which had lasted throughout life." There is a 
story of his having been forgotten one day among the knolls when a 
thunder storm came on ; and his aunt, suddenly recollecting his situation, 
and running out to bring him home, is said to have found him lying on 
his back, clapping his hands at the lightning, and crying out, "Bonny ! 
bonny i " at every flash. — Ed.] 



12 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

It is here at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence of my paternal 
grandfather, already mentioned, that I have the first conscious- 
ness of existence ; and I recollect distinctly that my situation 
and appearance .were a little whimsical. Among the odd rem- 
edies recurred to to aid ^ my lameness, some one had recom- 
mended, that so often as a sheep was killed for the use of the 
family, I should be stripped, and swathed up in the skin, warm 
as it was flayed from the carcase of the animal. In this Tar- 
tar-like habiliment I well remember lying upon the floor of 
the little parlour in the farm-house, while my grandfather, a 
venerable old man with white hair, used every excitement to 
make me try to crawl. I also distinctly remember the late Sir 
George MacDougal of Mackerstoun, father of the present Sir 
Henry Hay MacDougal, joining in this kindly attempt. He 
was, God knows how, 1 a relation of ours, and I still recollect 
him in his old-fashioned military habit (he had been colonel of 
the Greys), with a small cocked hat, deeply laced, an embroid- 
ered scarlet waistcoat, and a light-coloured coat, with milk- 
white locks tied in a military fashion, kneeling on the ground 
before me, and dragging his watch along the carpet to induce 
me to follow it. The benevolent old soldier and the infant 
wrapped in his sheepskin would have afforded an odd group to 
uninterested spectators. This must have happened about my 
third year, for Sir George MacDougal and my grandfather 
both died shortly after that period. 

My grandmother continued for some years to take charge of 
the farm, assisted by my father's second brother, Mr. Thomas 
Scott, who resided at Crailirig, as factor or land-steward for 
Mr. Scott of Danesfield, then proprietor of that estate. 2 This 
was during the heat of the American war, and I remember 
being as anxious on my uncle's weekly visits (for we heard 
news at no other time) to hear of the defeat of Washington, 

1 He was a second-cousin of my grandfather's. Isobel MacDougal, 
wife of Walter, the first Laird of Raeburn, and mother of Walter Scott, 
called Beardie, was grandaunt, I take it, to the late Sir George Mac- 
Dougal. There was always great friendship between us and the Maker- 
stoun family. It singularly happened, that at the burial of the late Sir 
Henry MacDougal, my cousin William Scott, younger of Raeburn, and I 
myself, were the nearest blood-relations present, although our connexion 
was of so old a date, and ranked as pall-bearers accordingly. — 1826. 

2 My uncle afterwards resided at Elliston, and then took from Mr. 
Cornelius Elliot the estate of Woollee. Finally he retired to Monklaw, 
in the neighbourhood of Jedburgh, where he died, 1823, at the advanced 
age of ninety years, and in full possession of his faculties. It was a fine 
thing to hear him talk over the change of the country which he had 
witnessed. — 1826. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 13 

as if I had had some deep and personal cause of antipathy to 
him. I know not how this was combined with a very strong 
prejudice in favour of the Stuart family, which I had originally 
imbibed from the songs and tales of the Jacobites. This 
latter political propensity was deeply confirmed by the stories 
told in my hearing of the cruelties exercised in the executions 
at Carlisle, and in the Highlands, after the battle of Culloden. 
One or two of our own distant relations had fallen on that 
occasion, and I remember of detesting the name of Cumber- 
land with more than infant hatred. Mr. Curie, farmer at 
Yetbyre, husband of one of my aunts, had been present at their 
execution ; and it was probably from him that I first heard 
these tragic tales which made so great an impression on me. 
The local information, which I conceive had some share in 
forming my future taste and pursuits, I derived from the old 
songs and tales which then formed the amusement of a retired 
country family. My grandmother, in whose youth the old 
Border depredations were matter of recent tradition, used to 
tell me many a tale of Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aik- 
wood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodheacl, and other heroes — 
merrymen all of the persuasion and calling of Robin Hood 
and Little John. A more recent hero, but not of less note, 
was the celebrated Diet of Littledean, whom she well remem- 
bered, as he had married her mother's sister. Of this extraor- 
dinary person I learned many a story, grave and gay, comic 
and warlike. Two or three old books which lay in the 
window-seat were explored for my amusement in the tedious 
winter days. Automathes, and Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, 
were my favourites, although at a later period an odd volume 
of Josephus's Wars of the Jews divided my partiality. 

My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose mem- 
ory will ever be dear to me, used to read these works to me 
with admirable patience, until I could repeat long passages by 
heart. The ballad of Hardyknute I was early master of, to 
the great annoyance of almost our only visitor, the worthy 
clergyman of the parish, Dr. Duncan, who had not patience 
to have a sober chat interrupted by my shouting forth this 
ditty. Methinks I now see his tall thin emaciated figure, his 
legs cased in clasped gambadoes, and his face of a length that 
would have rivalled the Knight of La Mancha's, and hear him 
exclaiming, " One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon 
as where that child is." With this little acidity, which was 
natural to him, he was a most excellent and benevolent man, 
a gentleman in every feeling, and altogether different from 



14 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

those of his order who cringe at the tables of the gentry, or 
domineer and riot at those of the yeomanry. In his youth he 
had been chaplain in the family of Lord Marchmont — had seen 
Pope — and could talk familiarly of many characters who had 
survived the Augustan age of Queen Anne. Though valetudi- 
nary, he lived to be nearly ninety, and to welcome to Scotland 
his son, Colonel William Duncan, who, with the highest char- 
acter for military and civil merit, had made a considerable 
fortune in India. In [1795], a few days before his death, I 
paid him a visit, to inquire after his health. I found him 
emaciated to the last degree, wrapped in a tartan night-gown, 
and employed with all the activity of health and youth in cor- 
recting a history of the Revolution, which he intended should 
be given to the public when he was no more. He read me sev- 
eral passages with a voice naturally strong, and which the feel- 
ings of an author then raised above the depression of age and 
declining health. I begged him to spare this fatigue, which 
could not but injure his health. His answer was remarkable. 
"I know/' he said, "that I cannot survive a fortnight — and 
what signifies an exertion that can at worst only accelerate 
my death a few days ?" I marvelled at the composure of this 
reply, for his appearance sufficiently vouched the truth of his 
prophecy, and rode home to my uncle's (then my abode), mus- 
ing what there could be in the spirit of authorship that could 
inspire its votaries with the courage of martyrs. He died 
within less than the period he assigned — with which event 
I close my digression. 

I was in my fourth year when my father was advised that 
JAie Bath waters might be of some advantage to my lameness. 
My affectionate aunt, although such a journey promised to a 
person of her retired habits anything but pleasure or amuse- 
ment, undertook as readily to accompany me to the wells of 
Bladud, as if she had expected all the delight that ever the 
prospect of a watering-place held out to its most impatient 
visitants. My health was by this time a good deal confirmed 
by the country air, and the influence of that imperceptible and 
unfatiguing exercise to which the good sense of my grandfather 
had subjected me ; for when the day was fine, I was usually 
carried out and laid down beside the old shepherd, among the 
crags or rocks round which he fed his sheep. The impatience 
of a child soon inclined me to struggle with my infirmity, and 
I began by degrees to stand, to walk, and to ruo. Although 
the limb affected was much shrunk and contracted, my general 
health, which was of more importance, was much strength- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 15 

ened by being frequently in the open air ; and, in a word, I 
who in a city had probably been condemned to hopeless and 
helpless decrepitude, was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my 
lameness apart, a sturdy child — non sine diis animosus infans. 

We went to London by sea, and it may gratify the curiosity 
of minute biographers to learn that our voyage was performed 
in the Duchess of Buccleuch, Captain Beatson, master. At 
London we made a short stay, and saw some of the common 
shows exhibited to strangers. When, twenty-five years after- 
wards, I visited the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, 
I was astonished to find how accurate my recollections of these 
celebrated places of visitation proved to be, and I have ever 
since trusted more implicitly to my juvenile reminiscences. 
At Bath, where I lived about a year, I went through all the 
usual discipline of the pump-room and baths, but I believe 
without the least advantage to my lameness. During my res- 
idence at Bath, I acquired the rudiments of reading at a day- 
school, kept by an old dame near our lodgings, and I had 
never a more regular teacher, although I think I did not at- 
tend her a quarter of a year. An occasional lesson from my 
aunt supplied the rest. Afterwards, when grown a big boy, 
I had a few lessons from Mr. Stalker of Edinburgh, and 
finally from the Rev. Mr. Cleeve. But I never acquired a 
just pronunciation, nor could I read with much propriety. 

In other respects my residence at Bath is marked by very 
pleasing recollections. The venerable John Home, author of 
Douglas, was then at the watering-place, and paid much atten- 
tion to my aunt and to me. His wife, who has survived him, 
was then an invalid, and used to take the air in her carriage 
on the Downs, when I was often invited to accompany her. 
But the most delightful recollections of Bath are dated after 
the arrival of my uncle, Captain Robert Scott, who introduced 
me to all the little amusements which suited my age, and above 
all, to the theatre. The play was As You Like It ; and the 
witchery of the whole scene is alive in my mind at this mo- 
ment. I made, I believe, noise more than enough, and remem- 
ber being so much scandalised at the quarrel between Orlando 
and his brother in the first scene, that I screamed out, " A'n't 
they brothers ? V1 A few weeks' residence at home convinced 
me, who had till then been an only child in the house of my 
grandfather, that a quarrel between brothers was a very nat- 
ural event. 

1 [See Scott's Review of the Life of John Kemble, Miscell. Prose, vol. 
xx. p. 154. — Ed.] 



16 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

The other circumstances I recollect of my residence in Bath 
are but trifling, yet I never recall them without a feeling of 
pleasure. The beauties of the parade (which of them I know 
not), with the river of Avon winding around it, and the lowing 
of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my recollec- 
tion, and are only rivalled by the splendours of a toy-shop 
somewhere near the Orange Grove. I had acquired, I know 
not by what means, a kind of superstitious terror for statuary 
of all kinds. No ancient Iconoclast or modern Calvinist could 
have looked on the outside of the Abbey church (if I mistake 
not, the principal church at Bath is so called) with more horror 
than the image of Jacob's Ladder, with all its angels, presented 
to my infant eye. My uncle effectually combated my terrors, 
and formally introduced me to a statue of Neptune, which per- 
haps still keeps guard at the side of the Avon, where a pleas- 
ure boat crosses to Spring Gardens. 

After being a year at Bath, I returned first to Edinburgh, and 
afterwards for a season to Sandy-Knowe ; — and thus the time 
whiled away till about my eighth year, when it was thought 
sea-bathing might be of service to my lameness. 

For this purpose, still under my aunt's protection, I remained 
some weeks at Prestonpans ; a circumstance not worth mention- 
ing, excepting to record my juvenile intimacy with an old mili- 
tary veteran, Dalgetty by name, who had pitched his tent in 
that little village, after all his campaigns, subsisting upon an en- 
sign's half-pay, though called by courtesy a Captain. As this old 
gentleman, who had been in all the German wars, found very 
few to listen to his tales of military feats, he formed a sort of 
alliance with me, and I used invariably to attend him for the 
pleasure of hearing those communications. Sometimes our con- 
versation turned on the American war, which was then raging. 
It was about the time of Burgoyne's unfortunate expedition, to 
which my Captain and I augured different conclusions. Some- 
body had shewed me a map of North America, and, struck with 
the rugged appearance of the country, and the quantity of lakes, 
I expressed some doubts on the subject of the General's arriv- 
ing safely at the end of his journey, which were very indignantly 
refuted by the Captain. The news of the Saratoga disaster, 
while it gave me a little triumph, rather shook my intimacy 
with the veteran. 1 

1 Besides this veteran, I found another ally at Prestonpans, in the 
person of George Constable, an old friend of my father's, educated to 
the law, but retired upon his independent property, and generally resid- 
ing near Dundee. He had many of those peculiarities of temper which 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 17 

From Prestonpans I was transported back to my father's house 
in George's Square, 1 which continued to be my most established 
place of residence, until my marriage in 1797. I felt the change 

long afterwards I tried to develope in the character of Jonathan Oldbuck. 
It is very odd, that though I am unconscious of anything in which I 
strictly copied the manners of my old friend, the resemblance was never- 
theless detected by George Chalmers, Esq., solicitor, London, an old 
friend, both of my father and Mr. Constable, and who affirmed to my 
late friend, Lord Kinedder, that I must needs be the author of The Anti- 
quary, since he recognised the portrait of George Constable. But my 
friend George was not so decided an enemy to womankind as his repre- 
sentative Monkbarns. On the contrary, I rather suspect that he had 
a tendresse for my aunt Jenny, who even then was a most beautiful 
woman, though somewhat advanced in life. To the close of her life, she 
had the finest eyes and teeth I ever saw, and though she could be suffi- 
ciently sharp when she had a mind, her general behaviour was genteel 
and ladylike. However this might be, I derived a great deal of curious 
information from George Constable, both at this early period, and 
afterwards. He was constantly philandering about my aunt, and of 
course very kind to me. He was the first person who told me about 
Falstaff and Hotspur, and other characters in Shakspeare. What idea 
I annexed to them I know not, but I must have annexed some, for I 
remember quite well being interested on the subject. Indeed, I rather 
suspect that children derive impulses of a powerful and important kind 
in hearing things which they cannot entirely comprehend ; and there- 
fore, that to write doiun to children's understanding is a mistake: set 
them on the scent, and let them puzzle it out. To return to George 
Constable : I knew him well at a much later period. He used always to 
dine at my father's house of a Sunday, and was authorised to turn the 
conversation out of the austere and Calvinistic tone, which it usually 
maintained on that day, upon subjects of history or auld langsyne. He 
remembered the forty-five, and told many excellent stories, all with a 
strong dash of a peculiar caustic humour. 

George's sworn ally as a brother antiquary was John Davidson, then 
Keeper of the Signet ; and I remember his flattering and compelling me 
to go to dine there. A writer's apprentice with the Keeper of the Signet, 
whose least officer kept us in order ! — It was an awful event. Thither, 
however, I went with some secret expectation of a scantling of good claret. 
Mr. D. had a son whose taste inclined him to the army, to which his father, 
who had designed him for the bar, gave a most unwilling consent. He was 
at this time a young officer, and he and I, leaving the two seniors to pro- 
ceed in their chat as they pleased, never once opened our mouths either to 
them or each other. The Pragmatic Sanction happened unfortunately to 
become the theme of their conversation, when Constable said in jest, "Now, 
John, I'll wad you a plack that neither of these two lads ever heard of the 
Pragmatic Sanction." — "Not heard of the Pragmatic Sanction!" said 
John Davidson ; " I would like to see that ; " and with a voice of thunder, 
he asked his son the fatal question. As young D. modestly allowed he 
knew nothing about it, his father drove him from the table in a rage, and 
I absconded during the confusion ; nor could Constable ever bring me 
back again to his friend Davidson's. — 1826. 

1 [No. 25.] 
c 






18 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

from being a single indulged brat, to becoming a member of a 
large family, very severely ; for under the gentle government 
of my kind grandmother, who was meekness itself, and of my 
aunt, who, though of an higher temper, was exceedingly attached 
to me, I had acquired a degree of licence which could not be 
permitted in a large family. I had sense enough, however, to 
bend my temper to my new circumstances ; but such was the 
agony which I internally experienced, that I have guarded 
against nothing more in the education of my own family, than 
against their acquiring habits of self-willed caprice and domina- 
tion. I found much consolation during this period of mortifi- 
cation, in the partiality of my mother. She joined to a light 
and happy temper of mind a strong turn to study poetry and 
works of imagination. She was sincerely devout, but her relig- 
ion was, as became her sex, of a cast less austere than my father's. 
Still, the discipline of the Presbyterian Sabbath was severely 
strict, and I think injudiciously so. Although Bunyan's Pil- 
grim, Gesner's Death of Abel, Powe's Letters, and one or two 
other books, which, for that reason, I still have a favour for, 
were admitted to relieve the gloom of one dull sermon succeed- 
ing to another — there was far too much tedium annexed to the 
duties of the day ; and in the end it did none of us any good. 

My week-day tasks were more agreeable. My lameness and 
my solitary habits had made me a tolerable reader, and my 
hours of leisure were usually spent in reading aloud to my 
mother Pope's translation of Homer, which, excepting a few 
traditionary ballads, and the songs in Allan Pamsay's Ever- 
green, was the first poetry which I perused. My mother had 
good natural taste and great feeling: she used to make me 
pause upon those passages which expressed generous and worthy 
sentiments, and if she could not divert me from those which 
were descriptive of battle and tumult, she contrived at least to 
divide my attention between them. My own enthusiasm, how- 
ever, was chiefly awakened by the wonderful and the terrible 
— the common taste of children, but in which I have remained 
a child even unto this day. I got by heart, not as a task, but 
almost without intending it, the passages with which I was most 
pleased, and used to recite them aloud, both when alone and to 
others — more willingly, however, in my hours of solitude, for 
I had observed some auditors smile, and I dreaded ridicule at 
that time of life more than I have ever done since. 

In [1778] I was sent to the second class of the Grammar 
School, or High School of Edinburgh, then taught by Mr. Luke 
Fraser, a good Latin scholar and a very worthy man. Though 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 19 

I had received, with, my brothers, in private, lessons of Latin 
from Mr. James French, now a minister of the Kirk of Scot- 
land, I was nevertheless rather behind the class in which I was 
placed both in years and in progress. This was a real disad- 
vantage, and one to which a boy of lively temper and talents 
ought to be as little exposed as one who might be less expected to 
make up his lee-Avay, as it is called. The situation has the un- 
fortunate effect of reconciling a boy of the former character 
(which in a posthumous work I may claim for my own) to hold- 
ing a subordinate station among his class-fellows — to which 
he would otherwise affix disgrace. There is also, from the 
constitution of the High School, a certain danger not sufficiently 
attended to. The boys take precedence in their places, as they 
are called, according to their merit, and it requires a long while, 
in general, before even a clever boy, if he falls behind the class, 
or is put into one for which he is not quite ready, can force his 
way to the situation which his abilities really entitle him to 
hold. But, in the meanwhile, he is necessarily led to be the 
associate and companion of those inferior spirits with whom he 
is placed; for the system of precedence, though it does not 
limit the general intercourse among the boys, has nevertheless 
the effect of throwing them into clubs and coteries, according 
to the vicinity of the seats they hold. A boy of good talents, 
therefore, placed even for a time among his inferiors, especially 
if they be also his elders, learns to participate in their pursuits 
and objects of ambition, which are usually very distinct from 
the acquisition of learning ; and it will be well if he does not 
also imitate them in that indifference which is contented with 
bustling over a lesson so as to avoid punishment, without affect- 
ing superiority or aiming at reward. It was probably owing 
to this circumstance, that, although at a more advanced period 
of life I have enjoyed considerable facility in acquiring lan- 
guages, I did not make any great figure at the High School — 
or, at least, any exertions which I made were desultory and 
little to be depended on. 1 

Our class contained some very excellent scholars. The first 
Dux was James Buchan, who retained his honoured place, 
almost without a day's interval, all the while we were at the 
High School. He was afterwards at the head of the medical 
staff in Egypt, and in exposing himself to the plague infection, 
by attending the hospitals there, displayed the same well- 

1 [The story of Green-breeks, and other passages in the General Preface 
to the Waverley Novels, afford some curious glimpses of High School life 
in Scott's clays. — Ed.] 



20 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

regulated and gentle, yet determined perseverance, which 
placed him most worthily at the head of his school-fellows, 
while many lads of livelier parts and dispositions held an 
inferior station. The next best scholars (sed longo intercallo) 
were my friend David Douglas, the heir and eUve of the cele- 
brated Adam Smith, and James Hope, now a Writer to the 
Signet, both since well known and distinguished in their 
departments of the law. As for myself, I glanced like a 
meteor from one end of the class to the other, and commonly 
disgusted my kind master as much by negligence and frivolity, 
as I occasionally pleased him by flashes of intellect and talent. 
Among my companions, my good-nature and a flow of ready 
imagination rendered me very popular. Boys are uncommonly 
just in their feelings, and at least equally generous. My lame- 
ness, and the efforts which I made to supply that disadvantage, 
by making up in address what I wanted in activity, engaged 
the latter principle in my favour ; and in the winter play hours, 
when hard exercise was impossible, my tales used to assemble 
an admiring audience round Lucky Brown's fireside, and 
happy was he that could sit next to the inexhaustible narrator. 
I was also, though often negligent of my own task, always 
ready to assist my friends ; and hence I had a little party of 
staunch partisans and adherents, stout of hand and heart, 
though somewhat dull of head — the very tools for raising a 
hero to eminence. So, on the whole, I made a brighter figure 
in the yards than in the class. 1 

My father did not trust our education solely to our High 
School lessons. We had a tutor at home [Mr. James Mitchell], 
a young man of an excellent disposition, and a laborious 
student. He was bred to the Kirk, but unfortunately took 
such a very strong turn to fanaticism, that he afterwards 
resigned an excellent living in a seaport town, merely because 
he could not persuade the mariners of the guilt of setting sail 
of a Sabbath, — in which, by the by, he was less likely to be 
successful, as, cceteris paribus, sailors, from an opinion that it 
is a fortunate omen, always choose to weigh anchor on that 

1 I read not long since, in that authentic record called the Percy Anec- 
dotes, that I had been educated at Musselburgh school, where I had been 
distinguished as an absolute dunce; only Dr. Blair, seeing farther into 
the inill-stone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never was at Mus- 
selburgh school in my life, and though I have met Dr. Blair at my father's 
and elsewhere, I never had the good fortune to attract his notice, to my 
knowledge. Lastly, I was never a dunce, nor thought to be so, but an 
incorrigibly idle imp, who was always longing to do something else than 
what was enjoined him. — 1826. 



A UTOBIOGBAPHY. 21 

day. The calibre of this young man's understanding may be 
judged of by this anecdote; but in other respects, he was a 
faithful and active instructor ; and from him chiefly I learned 
writing and arithmetic. I repeated to him my French lessons, 
and studied with him my themes in the classics, but not 
classically. I also acquired, by disputing with him (for this 
he readily permitted), some knowledge of school-divinity and 
church-history, and a great acquaintance in particular with the 
old books describing the early history of the Church of Scot- 
land, the wars and sufferings of the Covenanters, and so forth. 
I, with a head on fire for chivalry, was a Cavalier ; my friend 
was a Eoundhead : I was a Tory, and he was a Whig. I hated 
Presbyterians, and admired Montrose with his victorious High- 
landers ; he liked the Presbyterian Ulysses, the dark and pol- 
itic Argyle : so that we never wanted subjects of dispute; 
but our disputes were always amicable. In all these tenets 
there was no real conviction on my part, arising out of acquaint- 
ance with the views or principles of either party ; nor had my 
antagonist address enough to turn the debate on such topics. 
I took up my politics at that period, as King Charles II. did 
his religion, from an idea that the Cavalier creed was the more 
gentlemanlike persuasion of the two. 

After having been three years under Mr. Eraser, our class 
was, in the usual routine of the school, turned over to Dr. 
Adam, the Rector. It was from this respectable man that I 
first learned the value of the knowledge I had hitherto con- 
sidered only as a burdensome task. It was the fashion to 
remain two years at his class, where we read Caesar, and Livy, 
and Sallust, in prose ; Virgil, Horace, and Terence, in verse. 
I had by this time mastered, in some degree, the difficulties of 
the language, and began to be sensible of its beauties. This 
was really gathering grapes from thistles ; nor shall I soon 
forget the swelling of my little pride when the E-ector pro- 
nounced, that though many of my school-fellows understood 
the Latin better, Gualterus Scott was behind few in following 
and enjoying the author's meaning. Thus encouraged, I 
distinguished myself by some attempts at poetical versions 
from Horace and Virgil. 1 Dr. Adam used to invite his scholars 

1 [One of these little pieces, written in a weak boyish scrawl, within 
pencilled marks still visible, had been carefully preserved by his mother ; 
it was folded up in a cover inscribed by the old lady — " My Walter" 1 s first 
lines, 1782." 

" In awful ruins ^Etna thunders nigh, 
And sends in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky 



22 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

to such, essays, but never made them tasks. I gained some 
distinction upon these occasions, and the Rector in future 
took much notice of me ; and his judicious mixture of censure 
and praise went far to counterbalance my habits of indolence 
and inattention. I saw I was expected to do well, and I was 
piqued in honour to vindicate my master's favourable opinion. 
I climbed, therefore, to the first form ; and, though I never 
made a first-rate Latinist, my school-fellows, and what was of 
more consequence, I myself, considered that I had a character 
for learning to maintain. Dr. Adam, to whom I owed so much, 
never failed to remind me of my obligations when I had made 
some figure in the literary world. He was, indeed, deeply 
imbued with that fortunate vanity which alone could induce a 
man who has arms to pare and burn a nmir, to submit to the 
yet more toilsome task of cultivating youth. As Catholics 
confide in the imputed righteousness of their saints, so did the 
good old Doctor plume himself upon the success of his scholars 
in life, all of which he never failed (and often justly) to claim 
as the creation, or at least the fruits, of his early instructions. 
He remembered the fate of every boy at Ms school during the 
fifty years he had superintended it, and always traced their 
success or misfortunes entirely to their attention or negligence 
when under his care. His "noisy mansion/' which to others 
would have been a melancholy bedlam, was the pride of his 
heart ; and the only fatigues he felt, amidst din and tumult, 
and the necessity of reading themes, hearing lessons, and 
maintaining some degree of order at the same time, were 
relieved by comparing himself to Csesar, who could dictate to 
three secretaries at once ; — so ready is vanity to lighten the 
labours of duty. 

It is a pity that a man so learned, so admirably adapted 
for his station, so useful, so simple, so easily contented, should 
have had other subjects of mortification. But the magistrates 
of Edinburgh, not knowing the treasure they possessed in Dr. 
Adam, encouraged a savage fellow, called Nicol, one of the 
undermasters, in insulting his person and authority. This 
man was an excellent classical scholar, and an admirable con- 

Black clouds of smoke, which, still as they aspire. 

From their dark sides there bursts the glowing fire ; 

At other times huge balls of fire aretoss'd, 

That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost : 

Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn, 

Emits huge rocks, which instantly are borne 

With loud explosions to the starry skies, 

The stones made liquid as the huge mass flies, 

Then back again with srreater weight recoils. 

While JEtna thundering from the bottom boils." — En.] 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 23 

vivial humourist (which latter quality recommended him to the 
friendship of Burns) ; but worthless, drunken, and inhumanly 
cruel to the boys under his charge. He carried his feud against 
the Rector within an inch of assassination, for he waylaid and 
knocked him down in the dark. The favour which this worth- 
less rival obtained in the town-council led to other consequences, 
which for some time clouded poor Adam's happiness and fair 
fame. When the French Revolution broke out, and parties 
ran high in approving or condemning it, the Doctor incau- 
tiously joined the former. This was very natural, for as all 
his ideas of existing governments were derived from his ex- 
perience of the town-council of Edinburgh, it must be admitted 
they scarce brooked comparison with the free states of Rome 
and Greece, from which he borrowed his opinions concerning 
republics. His want of caution in speaking on the political 
topics of the day lost him the respect of the boys, most of whom 
were accustomed to hear very different opinions on those mat- 
ters in the bosom of their families. This, however (which was 
long after my time), passed away with other heats of the period, 
and the Doctor continued his labours till about a year since, 
when he was struck with palsy while teaching his class. He 
survived a few days, but becoming delirious before his dissolu- 
tion, conceived he was still in school, and after some expressions 
of applause or censure, he said, " But it grows dark — the boys 
may dismiss," — and instantly expired. 

From Dr. Adam's class I should, according to the usual rou- 
tine, have proceeded immediately to college. But, fortunately, 
I was not yet to lose, by a total dismission from constraint, the 
acquaintance with the Latin which I had acquired. My health 
had become rather delicate from rapid growth, and my father 
was easily persuaded to allow me to spend half-a-year at Kelso 
with my kind aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose inmate I again 
became. It was hardly worth mentioning that I had frequently 
visited her during our short vacations. 

At this time she resided in a small house, situated very 
pleasantly in a large garden, to the eastward of the churchyard 
of Kelso, which extended down to the Tweed. It was then 
my father's property, from whom it was afterwards purchased 
by my uncle. My grandmother was now dead, and my aunt's 
only companion, besides an old maid servant, was my cousin, 
Miss Barbara Scott, now Mrs. Meik. My time was here left en- 
tirely to my own disposal excepting for about four hours in the 
day, when I was expected to attend the Grammar School of the 
village. The teacher, at that time, was Mr. Lancelot Whale, an 



24 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

excellent classical scholar, a humourist, and a worthy man. 
He had a supreme antipathy to the puns which his very uncom- 
mon name frequently gave rise to ; insomuch, that he made his 
son spell the word Wale, which only occasioned the young man 
being nicknamed the Prince of Wales by the military mess to 
which he belonged. As for Whale, senior, the least allusion to 
Jonah, or the terming him an odd fish, or any similar quibble, 
was sure to put him beside himself. In point of knowledge 
and taste, he was far too good for the situation he held, which 
only required that he should give his scholars a rough founda- 
tion in the Latin language. My time with him, though short, 
was spent greatly to my advantage and his gratification. He 
was glad to escape to Persius and Tacitus from the eternal 
Rudiments and Cornelius Nepos ; and as perusing these authors 
with one who began to understand them was to him a labour 
of love, I made considerable progress under his instructions. I 
suspect, indeed, that some of the time dedicated to me was 
withdrawn from the instruction of his more regular scholars ; 
but I was as grateful as I could. I acted as usher, and heard 
the inferior classes, and I spouted the speech of Galgacus at 
the public examination, which did not make the less impres- 
sion on the audience that few of them probably understood one 
word of it. 

In the meanwhile my acquaintance with English literature 
was gradually extending itself. In the intervals of my school 
hours I had always perused with avidity such books of history 
or poetry or voyages and travels as chance presented to me — 
not forgetting the usual, or rather ten times the usual, quantity 
of fairy tales, eastern stories, romances, &c. These studies 
were totally unregulated and undirected. My tutor thought it 
almost a sin to open a profane play or poem ; and my mother, 
besides that she might be in some degree trammelled by the 
religious scruples which he suggested, had no longer the op- 
portunity to hear me read poetry as formerly. I found, how- 
ever, in her dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some 
odd volumes of Shakspeare, nor can I easily forget the rapt- 
ure with which I sate up in my shirt reading them by the light 
of a fire in her apartment, until the bustle of the family rising 
from supper warned me it was time to creep back to my bed, 
where I was supposed to have been safely deposited since nine 
o'clock. Chance, however, threw in my way a poetical precep- 
tor. This was no other than the excellent and benevolent Dr. 
Blacklock, well known at that time as a literary character. I 
know not how I attracted his attention, and that of some of 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 25 

the young men who boarded in his family ; but so it was that 
I became a frequent and favoured guest. The kind old man 
opened to me the stores of his library, and through his recom- 
mendation I became intimate with Ossian and Spenser. I was 
delighted with both, yet I think chiefly with the latter poet. 
The tawdry repetitions of the Ossianic phraseology disgusted 
me rather sooner than might have been expected from my age. 
But Spenser I could have read for ever. Too young to trouble 
myself about the allegory, I considered all the knights and 
ladies and dragons and giants in their outward and exoteric 
sense, and God only knows how delighted I was to find myself 
in such society. As I had always a wonderful facility in retain- 
ing in my memory whatever verses pleased me, the quantity of 
Spenser's stanzas which I could repeat was really marvellous. 
But this memory of mine was a very fickle ally, and has through 
my whole life acted merely upon its own capricious motion, and 
might have enabled me to adopt old Beattie of Meikledale's 
answer, when complimented by a certain reverend divine on 
the strength of the same faculty : — " No, sir," answered the 
old Borderer, " I have no command of my memory. It only 
retains what hits my fancy, and probably, sir, if you were to 
preach to me for two hours, I would not be able when you 
finished to remember a word you had been saying." My mem- 
ory was precisely .of the same kind : it seldom failed to preserve 
most tenaciously a favourite passage of poetry, a play-house 
ditty, or, above all, a Border-raid ballad; but names, dates, 
and the other technicalities of history, escaped me in a most 
melancholy degree. The philosophy of history, a much more 
important subject, was also a sealed book at this period of my 
life; but I gradually assembled much of what was striking 
and picturesque in historical narrative; and when, in riper 
years, I attended more to the deduction of general principles, 
I was furnished with a powerful host of examples in illustra- 
tion of them. I was, in short, like an ignorant gamester, who 
kept up a good hand until he knew how to play it. 

I left the High School, therefore, with a great quantity of 
general information, ill arranged, indeed, and collected with- 
out system, yet deeply impressed upon my mind ; readily as- 
sorted by my power of connexion and memory, and gilded, if 
I may be permitted to say so, by a vivid and active imagina- 
tion. If my studies were not under any direction at Edinburgh, 
in the country, it may be well imagined, they were less so. A 
respectable subscription library, a circulating library of ancient 
standing, and some private book-shelves, were open to my 



26 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

random persual, and I waded into the stream like a blind man 
into a ford, without the power of searching my way, unless by 
groping for it. My appetite for books was as ample and indis- 
criminating as it was indefatigable, and I since have had too 
frequently reason to repent that few ever read so much, and to 
so little purpose. 

Among the valuable acquisitions I made about this time, was 
an acquaintance with Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, through 
the flat medium of Mr. Hoole's translation. But above all, I 
then first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's Reliques of 
Ancient Poetry. As I had been from infancy devoted to legen- 
dary lore of this nature, and only reluctantly withdrew my 
attention, from the scarcity of materials and the rudeness of 
those which I possessed, it may be imagined, but cannot be 
described, with what delight I saw pieces of the same kind 
which had amused my childhood, and still continued in secret 
the Delilahs of my imagination, considered as the subject of 
sober research, grave commentary, and apt illustration, by an 
editor who shewed his poetical genius was capable of emulating 
the best qualities of what his pious labour preserved. I re- 
member well the spot where I read these volumes for the first 
time. It was beneath a huge platanus-tree, in the ruins of 
what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbour in the 
garden I have mentioned. The summer-day. sped onward so 
fast, that notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I 
forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and 
was still found entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read 
and to remember was in this instance the same thing, and 
henceforth I overwhelmed my school-fellows, and all who 
would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads 
of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could scrape a few 
shillings together, which were not common occurrences with 
me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes ; 
nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or with 
half the enthusiasm. About this period also I became ac- 
quainted with the works of Richardson, and those of Mac- 
kenzie — (whom in later years I became entitled to call my 
friend) — with Fielding, Smollet, and some others of our best 
novelists. 

To this period also I can trace distinctly the awaking of that 
delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has 
never since deserted me. The neighbourhood of Kelso, the 
most beautiful, if not the most romantic village in Scotland, 
is eminently calculated to awaken these ideas. It presents 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 27 

objects, not only grand in themselves, but venerable from their 
association. The meeting of two superb rivers, the Tweed and 
the Teviot, both renowned in song — the ruins of an ancient 
Abbey — the more distant vestiges of Roxburgh Castle — the 
modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as to combine 
the ideas of ancient baronial grandeur with those of modern 
taste — are in themselves objects of the first class; yet are so 
mixed, united, and melted among a thousand other beauties of 
a less prominent description, that they harmonise into one gen- 
eral picture, and please rather by unison than by concord. I 
believe I have Avritten unintelligibly upon this subject, but it 
is fitter for the pencil than the pen. The romantic feelings 
which I have described as predominating in my mind, natu- 
rally rested upon and associated themselves with these grand 
features of the landscape around me ; and the historical inci- 
dents, or traditional legends connected with many of them, 
gave to my admiration a sort of intense impression of rever- 
ence, which at times made my heart feel too big for its bosom. 
From this time the love of natural beauty, more especially 
when combined with ancient ruins, or remains of our fathers' 
piety or splendour, became with me an insatiable passion, 
which, if circumstances had permitted, I would willingly have 
gratified by travelling over half the globe. 

I was recalled to Edinburgh about the time when the College 
meets, and put at once to the Humanity class, under Mr. Hill, 
and the first Greek class, taught by Mr. Dalzell. The former 
held the reins of discipline very loosely, and though beloved 
by his students — for he was a good-natured man as well as a 
good scholar — he had not the art of exciting our attention as 
well as liking. This was a dangerous character with whom 
to trust one who relished labour as little as I did ; and amid 
the riot of his class I speedily lost much of what I had learned 
under Adam and Whale. At the Greek class, I might have 
made a better figure, for Professor Dalzell maintained a great 
deal of authority, and was not only himself an admirable 
scholar, but was always deeply interested in the progress of 
his students. But here lay the villany. Almost all my com- 
panions who had left the High School at the same time with 
myself, had acquired a smattering of Greek before they came 
to College. I, alas ! had none ; and finding myself far inferior 
to all my fellow-students, I could hit upon no better mode of 
vindicating my equality than by professing my contempt for the 
language, and my resolution not to learn it. A youth who died 
early, himself an excellent Greek scholar, saw my negligence 



28 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

and folly with pain, instead of contempt. He came to call on 
me in George's Square, and pointed out in the strongest terms 
the silliness of the conduct I had adopted, told me I was dis- 
tinguished by the name of the Greek Blockhead, and exhorted 
me to redeem my reputation while it was called to-day. My 
stubborn pride received this advice with sulky civility ; the 
birth of my Mentor (whose name was Archibald, the son of an 
inn-keeper) did not, as I thought in my folly, authorise him to 
intrude upon me his advice. The other was not sharp-sighted, 
or his consciousness of a generous intention overcame his re- 
sentment. He offered me his daily and nightly assistance, 
and pledged himself to bring me forward with the foremost of 
my class. I felt some twinges of conscience, but they were 
unable to prevail over my pride and self-conceit. The poor 
lad left me more in sorrow than in anger, nor did we ever meet 
again. All hopes of my progress in the Greek were now over ; 
insomuch that when we were required to write essays on the 
authors we had studied, I had the audacity to produce a com- 
position in which I weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pro- 
nounced him wanting in the balance. I supported this heresy 
by a profusion of bad reading and flimsy argument. The wrath 
of the Professor was extreme, while at the same time he could 
not suppress his surprise at the quantity of out-of-the-way 
knowledge which I displayed. He pronounced upon me the 
severe sentence — that dunce I was, and dunce was to remain 
— which, however, my excellent and learned friend lived to 
revoke over a bottle of Burgundy, at our literary Club at Fort- 
une's, of which he was a distinguished member. 

Meanwhile, as if to eradicate my slightest tincture of Greek, 
I fell ill during the middle of Mr. Dalzell's second class, and 
migrated a second time to Kelso — where I again continued a 
long time reading what and how I pleased, and of course read- 
ing nothing but what afforded me immediate entertainment. 
The only thing which saved my mind from utter dissipation, 
was that turn for historical pursuit, which never abandoned 
me even at the idlest period. I had forsworn the Latin classics 
for no "reason I know of, unless because they were akin to the 
Greek ; but the occasional perusal of Buchanan's history, that 
of Mathew of Paris, and other monkish chronicles, kept up a 
kind of familiarity with the language even in its rudest state. 
But I forgot the very letters of the Greek alphabet; a loss 
never to be repaired, considering what that language is, and 
who they were who employed it in their compositions. 

About this period — or soon afterwards — my father judged 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 29 

it proper I should study mathematics ; a study upon which I 
entered with all the ardour of novelty. My tutor was an aged 
person, Dr. MacFait, who had in his time been distinguished 
as a teacher of this science. Age, however, and some domestic 
inconveniences, had diminished his pupils, and lessened his 
authority amongst the few who remained. I think, that had I 
been more fortunately placed for instruction, or had I had the 
spur of emulation, I might have made some progress in this 
science, of which, under the circumstances I have mentioned, 
I only acquired a very superficial smattering. 

In other studies I was rather more fortunate. I made some 
progress in Ethics under Professor John Bruce, and was selected 
as one of his students whose progress he approved, to read an 
essay before Principal Robertson. I was farther instructed in 
Moral Philosophy at the class of Mr. Dugald Stewart, whose 
striking and impressive eloquence riveted the attention even of 
the most volatile student. To sum up my academical studies, 
I attended the class of History, then taught by the present 
Lord Woodhouselee, and, as far as I remember, no others, ex- 
cepting those of the Civil and Municipal Law. So that, if my 
learning be flimsy and inaccurate, the reader must have some 
compassion even for an idle workman who had so narrow a 
foundation to build upon. If, however, it should ever fall to 
the lot of youth to peruse these pages — let such a reader re- 
member, that it is with the deepest regret that I recollect in 
my manhood the opportunities of learning which I neglected 
in my youth ; that through every part of my literary career I 
have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance ; and 
that I would at this moment give half the reputation I have 
had the good fortune to acquire, if by doing so I could rest the 
remaining part upon a sound foundation of learning and science. 

I imagine my father's reason for sending me to so few classes 
in the College, was a desire that I should apply myself particu- 
larly to my legal studies. He had not determined whether I 
should fill the situation of an Advocate or a Writer ; but judi- 
ciously considering the technical knowledge of the latter to be 
useful at least, if not essential, to a barrister, he resolved I 
should serve the ordinary apprenticeship of five years to his 
own profession. I accordingly entered into indentures with 
my father about 1785-6, and entered upon the dry and barren 
wilderness of forms and conveyances. 

I cannot reproach myself with being entirely an idle appren- 
tice — far less, as the reader might reasonably have expected, 

" A clerk foredoom' d my father's soul to cross." 



30 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

The drudgery, indeed, of the office I disliked, and the confine- 
ment I altogether detested; but I loved my father, and I felt 
the rational pride and pleasure of rendering myself useful to 
him. I was ambitious also ; and among my companions in 
labour, the only way to gratify ambition was to labour hard! 
and well. Other circumstances reconciled me in some measure 
to the confinement. The allowance for copy-money furnished 
a little fund for the merius plaisi7*s of the circulating library 
and the Theatre ; and this was no trifling incentive to labour. 
When actually at the oar, no man could pull it harder than I ; 
and I remember writing upwards of 120 folio pages with no 
interval either for food or rest. Again, the hours of attend- 
ance on the office were lightened by the power of choosing my 
own books, and reading them in my own way, which often 
consisted in beginning at the middle or the end of a volume. 
A deceased friend, who was a fellow-apprentice with me, used 
often to express his surprise that, after such a hop-step-and- 
junip perusal, I knew as much of the book as he had been able 
to acquire from reading it in the usual manner. My desk usu- 
ally contained a store of most miscellaneous volumes, especially 
works of fiction of every kind, which were my supreme delight. 
I might except novels, unless those of the better and higher 
class ; for though I read many of them, yet it was with more 
selection than might have been expected. The whole Jemmy 
and Jenny Jessamy tribe I abhorred ; and it required the art 
of Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention 
upon a domestic tale. But all that was adventurous and 
romantic I devoured without much discrimination, and I really 
believe I have read as much nonsense of this class as any man 
now living. Everything which touched on knight-errantry was 
particularly acceptable to me, and I soon attempted to imitate 
what I so greatly admired. My efforts, however, were in the 
manner of the tale-teller, not of the bard. 

My greatest intimate, from the days of my school-tide, was 
Mr. John Irving, now a Writer to the Signet. 1 We lived near 

1 [In speaking of the High School period, Mr. John Irving says : " He 
began early to collect old ballads, and as my mother could repeat a great 
many, he used to come and learn those she could recite to him. He 
used to get all the copies of these ballads he could, and select the best." 
These, no doubt, were among the germs of a collection of ballads in six 
little volumes, which, from the handwriting, had been begun at this early 
period, and which is still preserved at Abbotsford. And it appears, that 
at least as early a date must be ascribed to another collection of little 
humorous stories in prose, the Penny Chap-books, as they are called, still 
in high favour among the lower classes in Scotland, which stands on the 



A UTOBIOGRA PHY. 31 

each other, and by joint agreement were wont, each of us, to 
compose a romance for the other's amusement. These legends, 
in which the martial and the miraculous always predominated, 
.we rehearsed to each other during our walks, which were usu- 
ally directed to the most solitary spots about Arthur's Seat and 
Salisbury Crags. We naturally sought seclusion, for we were 
conscious no small degree of ridicule would have attended our 
amusement, if the nature of it had become known. Whole 
holidays were spent in this singular pastime, which continued 
for two or three years, and had, I believe, no small effect in 
directing the turn of my imagination to the chivalrous and 
romantic in poetry and prose. 

Meanwhile, the translations of Mr. Hoole having made me 
acquainted with Tasso and Ariosto, I learned from his notes 
on the latter, that the Italian language contained a fund of 
romantic lore. A part of my earnings was dedicated to an 
Italian class which I attended twice a-week, and rapidly 
acquired some proficiency. I had previously renewed and 
extended my knowledge of the French language, from the 
same principle of romantic research. Tressan's romances, the 
Bibliotheque Bleue, and Bibliotheque de Romans, were already 
familiar to me ; and I now acquired similar intimacy with the 
works of Dante, Boiardo, Pulci, and other eminent Italian au- 
thors. I fastened also, like a tiger, upon every collection of 
old songs or romances which chance threw in my way, or which 
my scrutiny was able to discover on the dusty shelves of James 
Sibbald's circulating library in the Parliament Square. This 
collection, now dismantled and dispersed, contained at that 
time many rare and curious works, seldom found in such a 
collection. Mr. Sibbald himself, a man of rough manners but 
of some taste and judgment, cultivated music and poetry, and 
in his shop I had a distant view of some literary characters, 
besides the privilege of ransacking the stores of old French 
and Italian books, which were in little demand among the bulk 
of his subscribers. Here I saw the unfortunate Andrew Mac- 
donald, author of Vimonda; and here, too, I saw at a distance, 
the boast of Scotland, Robert Burns. Of the latter I shall 
presently have occasion to speak more fully. 1 

same shelf. In a letter of 1830, he states that he had bound up things 
of this kind to the extent of several volumes, before he was ten years 
old. — Ki>.] 

1 ["As for Burns," he writes, "I may truly say, ' Virgilium vidi 
tantum? I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when he came first to Edin- 
burgh, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his 



32 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

I am inadvertently led to confound dates while I talk of 
this remote period, for, as I have no notes, it is impossible for 
me to remember with accuracy the progress of studies, if they 
deserve the name, so irregular and miscellaneous. 

But about the second year of my apprenticeship, my health, 
which from rapid growth and other causes, had been hitherto 
rather uncertain and delicate, was affected by the breaking of 
a blood-vessel. The regimen I had to undergo on this occasion 
was far from agreeable. It was spring, and the weather raw 
and cold, yet I was confined to bed with a single blanket, and 
bled and blistered till I scarcely had a pulse left. I had all 
the appetite of a growing boy, but was prohibited any suste- 
nance beyond what was absolutely necessary for the support of 

poetry, and would have given the world to know him; but I had very- 
little acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry 
of the west country, — the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. 
Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew 
Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner, but had no 
opportunity to keep his word, otherwise I might have seen more of this 
distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one day at the late venerable 
Professor Fergusson's, where there were several gentlemen of literary 
reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. 
Of course we youngsters sate silent, looked and listened. The only thing 
I remember which was remarkable in Burns' manner, was the effect pro- 
duced upon him by a print of Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying dead 
on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on the one side, on the other his 
widow, with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath, — 

' Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain ; 
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew; 
The big drops, mingling' with the milk he drew, 
Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
The child of misery baptized in tears.' 

Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather the ideas which it 
suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. Pie asked whose the 
lines were, and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they 
occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the unpromising 
title of 'The Justice of the Peace.' I whispered my information to a 
friend present, who mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look 
and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still rec- 
ollect, with very great pleasure. . . . His conversation expressed perfect 
self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. Among the men who 
were the most learned of their time and country, he expressed himself 
with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness ; and 
when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet 
at the same time with modesty. I do not remember any part of his con- 
versation distinctly enough to be quoted, nor did I ever see him again, 
except in the street, where he did not recognise me, as I could not expect 
he should."— Letter to J, G. L. 1827.] 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 33 

nature, and that in vegetables alone. Above all, with a con- 
siderable disposition to talk, I was not permitted to open my 
lips without one or two old ladies who watched my couch being 
ready at once to souse upon me, " Imposing silence with a stilly 
sound." x My only refuge was reading and playing at chess. 
To the romances and poetry, which I chiefly delighted in, I 
had always added a study of history, especially as connected 
with military events. I was encouraged in this latter study 
by a tolerable acquaintance with geography, and by. the oppor- 
tunities I had enjoyed while with Mr. MacFait to learn the 
meaning of the more ordinary terms of fortification. While, 
therefore, I lay in this dreary and silent solitude, I fell upon 
the resource of illustrating the battles I read of by the childish 
expedient of arranging shells, and seeds, and pebbles, so as to 
represent encountering armies. Diminutive cross-bows were 
contrived to mimic artillery, and with the assistance of a 
friendly carpenter, I contrived to model a fortress, which, 
like that of uncle Toby, represented whatever place happened 
to be uppermost in my imagination. I fought my way thus 
through Vertot's Knights of Malta — a book which, as it hov- 
ered between history and romance, was exceedingly dear to 
me ; and Orme's interesting and beautiful History of Indostan, 
whose copious plans, aided by the clear and luminous explana- 
tions of the author, rendered my imitative amusement peculiarly 
easy. Other moments of these weary weeks were spent in look- 
ing at the Meadow Walks, by assistance of a combination of 
mirrors so arranged that, while lying in bed, I could see the 
troops march out to exercise, or any other incident which 
occurred on that promenade. 

After one or two relapses, my constitution recovered the 
injury it had sustained, though for several months afterwards 
I was restricted to a severe vegetable diet. And I must say, 
in passing, that though I gained health under this necessary 
restriction, yet it was far from being agreeable to me, and I 
was affected whilst under its influence with a nervousness 
which I never felt before or since. A disposition to start 
upon slight alarms — a want of decision in feeling and act- 
ing, which has not usually been my failing, an acute sensibil- 
ity to trifling inconveniences — and an unnecessary apprehension 
of contingent misfortunes, rise to my memory as connected with 
my vegetable diet, although they-may very possibly have been 
entirely the result of the disorder, and not of the cure. Be 
this as it may, with this illness I bade farewell both to disease 

1 Home's Tragedy of Douglas. 



34 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

and medicine ; for since that time, till the hour I am now writ- 
ing, I have enjoyed a state of the most robust health, having 
only had to complain of occasional headaches or stomachic 
affections when I have been long without taking exercise, or 
have lived too convivially — the latter having been occasionally, 
though not habitually, the error of my youth, as the forme* 
has been of my advanced life. 

My frame gradually became hardened with my constitution, 
and being both tall and muscular, I was rather disfigured than 
disabled by my lameness. This personal disadvantage did not 
prevent me from taking much exercise on horseback, and mak- 
ing long journeys on foot, in the course of which I often walked 
from twenty to thirty miles a day. A distinct instance occurs 
to me. I remember walking with poor James Ramsay, my fel- 
low-apprentice, now no more, and two other friends, to break- 
fast at Prestonpans. We spent the forenoon in visiting the 
ruins at Seton and the field of battle at Preston — dined at 
Prestonpans on tiled haddocks very sumptuously — drank half 
a bottle of port each, and returned in the evening. This could 
not be less than thirty miles, nor do I remember being at all 
fatigued upon the occasion. 1 

These excursions on foot or horseback formed by far my 
most favourite amusement. I have all my life delighted in 

1 [If he is quite accurate in referring (Preface to Waverley Novels) 
his first acquaintance with the Highlands to his fifteenth year, this inci- 
dent belongs to the first season of his apprenticeship. His father had, 
among a rather numerous list of Highland clients, Alexander Stewart of 
Invernahyle, an enthusiastic Jacobite, who had survived to recount, in se- 
cure and vigorous old age, his active experiences in the insurrections both of 
1715 and 1745. He had, it appears, attracted Walter's attention and admi- 
ration at a very early date ; for he speaks of having "seen him in arms," 
and heard him " exult in the prospect of drawing his claymore once more 
before he died," when Paul Jones threatened the descent on Edinburgh ; 
which occurred in September 1779. The eager delight with which the 
young apprentice now listened to the tales of this fine old man's early 
days, produced an invitation to his residence among the mountains ; and 
to this excursion he probably devoted the few weeks of an autumnal 
vacation — whether in 1786 or 1787, it is of no great consequence to 
ascertain. It was, however, to his allotted task of enforcing the execu- 
tion of a legal instrument against some Maclarens, refractory tenants of 
Stewart of Appin, brother-in-law to Invernahyle, that Scott owed his 
introduction to the scenery of the Lady of the Lake. " An escort of 
a sergeant and six men," he says, " was obtained from a Highland Regi- 
ment lying in Stirling, and the author, then a writer's apprentice, equiva- 
lent to the honourable situation of an attorney's clerk, was invested with 
the superintendence of the expedition. The sergeant was absolutely a 
Highland Sergeant Kite, full of stories of Rob Roy and of himself, and 
a very good companion." — Introduction to Rob Roy.— Ed.] 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35 

travelling, though I have never enjoyed that pleasure upon a 
large scale. It Avas a propensity which I sometimes indulged 
so unduly as to alarm and vex my parents. Wood, water, 
wilderness itself, had an inexpressible charm for me, and I 
had a dreamy way of going much further than I intended, so 
that unconsciously my return was protracted, and my parents 
had sometimes serious cause of uneasiness. For example, I 
once set out with Mr. George Abercromby 1 (the son of the 
immortal General), Mr. William Clerk, and some others, to 
fish in the lake above Howgate, and the stream which decends 
from it into the Esk. We breakfasted at Howgate, and fished 
the whole day ; and while Ave Avere on our return next morn- 
ing, I Avas easily seduced by William Clerk, then a great inti- 
mate, to visit Pennycuik-House, the seat of his family. Here 
he and John Irving, and I for their sake, were overAvhelmed 
with kindness by the late Sir John Clerk and his lady, the 
present DoAvager Lady Clerk. The pleasure of looking at fine 
pictures, the beauty of the place, and the flattering hospitality 
of the OAvners, droAvned all recollection of home for a day or 
tAA^o. Meamvhile our companions, who had A\ r alked on Avithout 
being aAvare of our digression, returned to Edinburgh Avithout 
us, and excited no small alarm in my father's household. At 
length, however, they became accustomed to my escapades. 
My father used to protest to me on such occasions that he 
thought I Avas born to be a strolling pedlar ; and though the 
prediction was intended to mortify my conceit, I am not sure 
that I altogether disliked it. I Avas uoav familiar Avith Shak- 
speare, and thought of Autolycus's song — 

"Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, 
And merrily hent the stile-a ; 
A merry heart goes all the day, 
Your sad tires in a mile-a." 

My principal object in these excursions was the pleasure of 
seeing romantic scenery, or Avhat afforded me at least equal 
pleasure, the places Avhich had been distinguished by remark- 
able historical events. The delight with Avhich I regarded the 
former, of course had general approbation, but I often found it 
difficult to procure sympathy Avith the interest I felt in the 
latter. Yet to me, the Avandering over the field of Bannock- 
burn Avas the source of more exquisite pleasure than gazing 
upon the celebrated landscape from the battlements of Stirling 

1 Now Lord Abercroinhy. — 1826. 



36 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

castle. I do not by any means infer that I was dead to the 
feeling of picturesque scenery ; on the contrary, few delighted 
more in its general effect. But I was unable with the eye of a 
painter to dissect the various parts of the scene, to compre- 
hend how the one bore upon the other, to estimate the effect 
which various features of the view had in producing its lead- 
ing and general effect. I have never, indeed, been capable of 
doing this with precision or nicety, though my latter studies 
have led me to amend and arrange my original ideas upon the 
subject. Even the humble ambition, which I long cherished, 
of making sketches of those places which interested me, from 
a defect of eye or of hand was totally ineffectual. After long 
study and many efforts, I was unable to apply the elements of 
perspective or of shade to the scene before me, and was 
obliged to relinquish in despair an art which I was most 
anxious to practise. But shew me an old castle or a field of 
battle, and I was at home at once, filled it with its combatants 
in their proper costume, and overwhelmed my hearers by the 
enthusiasm of my description. In crossing Magus Moor, near 
St. Andrews, the spirit moved me to give a picture of the 
assassination of the Archbishop of St. Andrews to some 
fellow-travellers with whom I was accidentally associated, and 
one of them, though well acquainted with the story, protested 
my narrative had frightened away his night's sleep. I men- 
tion this to shew the distinction between a sense of the pict- 
uresque in action and in scenery. If I have since been able 
in poetry to trace with some success the principles of the 
latter, it has always been with reference to its general and 
leading features, or under some alliance with moral feeling ; 
and even this proficiency has cost me study. — Meanwhile I 
endeavoured to make amends for my ignorance of drawing, by 
adopting a sort of technical memory respecting the scenes I 
visited. Wherever I went I cut a piece of a branch from a 
tree — these constituted what I called my log-book ; and I 
intended to have a set of chessmen out of them, each having 
reference to the place where it was cut — as the kings from 
Falkland and Holy-Bood; the queens from Queen Mary's 
yew tree at Crookston ; the bishops from abbeys or episcopal 
palaces ; the knights from baronial residences ; the rooks from 
royal fortresses ; and the pawns generally from places worthy 
of historical note. But this whimsical design I never carried 
into execution. 

With music it was even worse than with painting. My 
mother was anxious we should at least learn Psalmody, but 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37 

the incurable defects of my voice and ear soon drove my 
teacher to despair. 1 It is only by long practice that I have 
acquired the power of selecting or distinguishing melodies; 
and although now few things delight or affect me more than a 
simple tune sung with feeling, yet I am sensible that even this 
pitch of musical taste has only been gained by attention and 
habit, and, as it were, by my feeling of the words being asso- 
ciated with the tune. I have therefore been usually unsuc- 
cessful in composing words to a tune, although my friend Dr. 
Clarke, and other musical composers, have sometimes been 
able to make a happy union between their music and my 
poetry. 

In other points, however, I began to make some amends for 
the irregularity of my education. It is well known that in 
Edinburgh one great spur to emulation among youthful stu- 
dents is in those associations called literary societies, formed not 
only for the purpose of debate, but of composition. These un- 
doubtedly have some disadvantages, where a bold, petulant, 
and disputatious temper happens to be combined with consider- 
able information and talent. Still, however, in order to such 
a person being actually spoiled by his mixing in such debates, 
his talents must be of a very rare nature, or his effrontery 
must be proof to every species of assault ; for there is gener- 
ally, in a well-selected society of this nature, talent sufficient 
to meet the forwardest, and satire enough to penetrate the 
most undaunted. I am particularly obliged to this sort of 
club for introducing me about my seventeenth year into the 
society which at one time I had entirely dropped ; for, from 
the time of my illness at college, I had had little or no inter- 
course with any of my class-companions, one or two only ex- 

1 The late Alexander Campbell, a warm-hearted man, and an enthusiast 
in Scottish music, which he sang most beautifully, had this ungrateful task 
imposed on him. He was a man of many accomplishments, but dashed 
with a Irizarrerie of temper which made them useless to their proprietor. 
He wrote several books — as a Tour in Scotland, &c. ; — and he made an 
advantageous marriage, but fell nevertheless into distressed circumstances, 
which I had the pleasure of relieving, if I could not remove. His sense of 
gratitude was very strong, and shewed itself oddly in one respect. He 
would never allow that I had a bad ear ; but contended, that if I did not 
understand music, it was because I did not choose to learn it. But when 
he attended us in George's Square, our neighbour, Lady Gumming, sent 
to beg the boys might not be all flogged precisely at the same hour, as, 
though she had no doubt the punishment was deserved, the noise of the 
concord was really dreadful. Robert was the only one of our family who 
could sing, though my father was musical, and a performer on the violon- 
cello at the gentlemen's concerts. — 1826. 



38 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

ceptecl. Now, however, about 1788, I began to feel and take 
my ground in society. A ready wit, a good deal of enthusiasm, 
and a perception that soon ripened into tact and observation of 
character, rendered me an acceptable companion to many young 
men whose acquisitions in philosophy and science were infinitely 
superior to anything T could boast. 

In the business of these societies — for I was a member of 
more than one successively — I cannot boast of having made 
any great figure. I never was a good speaker, unless upon 
some subject which strongly animated my feelings; and, as I 
was totally unaccustomed to composition, as well as to the art 
of generalising my ideas upon any subject, my literary essays 
were but very poor work. I never attempted them unless when 
compelled to do so by the regulations of the society, and then 
I was like the Lord of Castle Rackrent, who was obliged to 
cut down a tree to get a few faggots to boil the kettle ; for the 
quantity of ponderous and miscellaneous knowledge which I 
really possessed on many subjects, was not easily condensed, or 
brought to bear upon the object I wished particularly to become 
master of. Yet there occurred opportunities when this odd 
lumber of my brain, especially that which was connected with 
the recondite parts of history, did me, as Hamlet says, " yeo- 
man's service." My memory of events was like one of the 
large, old-fashioned stone-cannons of the Turks — very difficult 
to load well and discharge, but making a powerful effect when 
by good chance any object did come within range of its shot. 
Such fortunate opportunities of exploding with effect main- 
tained my literary character among my companions, with whom 
I soon met with great indulgence and regard. The persons 
with whom I chiefly lived at this period of my youth were 
William Clerk, already mentioned; James Edmonstoune, of 
Newton ; George Abercromby ; Adam Eergusson, son of the 
celebrated Professor Eergusson, and who combined the light- 
est and most airy temper with the best and kindest disposition; 
John Irving, already mentioned ; the Honourable Thomas Doug- 
las, now Earl of Selkirk ; David Boyle, 1 — and two or three 
others, who sometimes plunged deeply into politics and meta- 
physics, and not unfrequently " doffed the world aside, and 
bid it pass." 

Looking back on these times, I cannot applaud in all re- 
spects the way in which our days were spent. There was too 
much idleness, and sometimes too much conviviality ; but our 
hearts Avere warm, our minds honourably bent on knowledge 

1 Now Lord Justice-Clerk. — 1826. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 39 

and literary distinction ; and if I, certainly the least informed 
of the party, may be permitted to bear witness, we were not 
without the fair and creditable means of attaining the distinc- 
tion to which we aspired. In this society I was naturally led 
to correct my former useless course of reading ; for — feeling 
myself greatly inferior to my companions in metaphysical 
philosophy and other branches of regular study — I laboured, 
not without some success, to acquire at least such a portion of 
knowledge as might enable me to maintain my rank in conver- 
sation. In this I succeeded pretty well ; but unfortunately 
then, as often since through my life, I incurred the deserved 
ridicule of my friends from the superficial nature of my acqui- 
sitions, which being, in the mercantile phrase, got up for society, 
very often proved flimsy in the texture ; and thus the gifts of 
an uncommonly retentive memory and acute powers of percep- 
tion were sometimes detrimental to their possessor, by encourag- 
ing him to a presumptuous reliance upon them. 1 

1 [Scott was admitted into the most celebrated of the Edinburgh debat- 
ing Societies, The Speculative, in January 1791. Soon after he was elected 
their librarian ; and in the November following, he became also their 
secretary and treasurer : — all which appointments indicate the reliance 
placed on his careful habits of business, the fruit of his chamber educa- 
tion. The minutes kept in his hand-writing attest the strict regularity of 
his attention to the affairs of the club ; but they shew also, as do all his 
early letters, a strange carelessness in spelling. His constant good temper 
softened the asperities of debate, while his multifarious lore, and the quaint 
humour with which he enlivened its display, made him more a favourite 
as a speaker than some whose powers of rhetoric were far above his. 

Mr. Francis Jeffrey, on the first night of his attendance at The Specu- 
lative, heard Scott read an essay on ballads, which so much interested 
the new member, that he requested to be introduced to him. Mr. Jeffrey 
called on him next evening, and found him " in a small den, on the sunk 
floor of his father's house in George's Square, surrounded with dingy 
books," from which they adjourned to a tavern, and supped together. 
Such was the commencement of an acquaintance, which by degrees rip- 
ened into friendship, between the two most distinguished men of letters 
whom Edinburgh produced in their time. I may add here the description 
of that early den, with which I am favoured by a lady of Scott's family : 
— " Walter had soon begun to collect out-of-the-way things of all sorts. 
He had more books than shelves ; a small painted cabinet, with Scotch 
and Roman coins in it, and so forth. A claymore and Lochaber axe, 
given him by old Invernahyle, mounted guard on a little print of Prince 
Charlie ; and Broughton's Saucer was hooked up against the wall below 
it." 

But I must explain Broughton's Saucer. Mrs. Scott's curiosity was 
strongly excited one autumn by the regular appearance, at a certain hour 
every evening, of a sedan chair, to deposit a person carefully muffled up 
in a mantle, who was immediately ushered into her husband's private 
room, and commonly remained with him there until long after the usual 



40 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Amidst these studies, and in this society, the time of my 
apprenticeship elapsed ; and in 1790, or thereabouts, it became 
necessary that I should seriously consider to which department 
of the law I was to attach myself. My father behaved with 
the most parental kindness. He offered, if I preferred his own 
profession, immediately to take me into partnership with him, 
which, though his business was much diminished, still afforded 
me an immediate prospect of a handsome independence. But 
he did not disguise his wish that I should relinquish this situa- 
tion to my younger brother, and embrace the more ambitious 
profession of the bar. I had little hesitation in making my 
choice — for I was never very fond of money ; and in no other 
particular do the professions admit of a comparison. Besides, I 
knew and felt the inconveniences attached to that of a Writer ; 
and I thought (like a young man) many of them were " ingenio 
non subeunda meo." 1 The appearance of personal dependence 

bed-time of this orderly family. Mr. Scott answered her repeated inqui- 
ries with a vagueness which irritated the lady's feelings more and more ; 
until, at last, she could bear the thing no longer ; but one evening, just as 
she heard the bell ring as for the stranger's chair to carry him off, she made 
her appearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in her hand, 
observing, that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long, they would be 
the better of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring some 
for their acceptance. The stranger, a person of distinguished appearance, 
and richly dressed, bowed to the lady, and accepted a cup ; but her hus- 
band knit his brows, and refused very coldly to partake the refreshment. 
A moment afterwards the visitor withdrew — and Mr. Scott lifting up the 
window-sash, took the cup, which he had left empty on the table, and 
tossed it out upon the pavement. The lady exclaimed for her china, but 
was put to silence by her husband's saying, "I can forgive your little 
curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty. I may admit into my 
house, on a piece of business, persons wholly unworthy to be treated as 
guests by my wife. Neither lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr. Mur- 
ray of Broughton's." This was the unhappy man who, after attending 
Prince Charles Stuart as his secretary throughout the greater part of his 
expedition, condescended to redeem his own life and fortune by bearing 
evidence against the noblest of his late master's adherents, when 

" Pitied by gentle hearts Kilmarnock died — 
The brave, Balmerino, were on thy side." 

When confronted with Sir John Douglas of Kelhead (ancestor of the Mar- 
quess of Queensberry), before the Privy Council in St. James's, the pris- 
oner was asked, "Do you know this witness?" "Not I," answered 
Douglas ; "I once knew a person who bore the designation of Murray of 
Broughton — but that was a gentleman and a man of honour, and one 
that could hold up his head ! " The saucer belonging to Broughton's tea- 
cup chanced to be preserved ; and Walter had made prize of it. — Ed.] 
i Milton, El eg. Lib. I. 



AUTOBIOGBAPHY. 41 

which that profession requires was disagreeable to me ; the sort 
of connexion between the client and the attorney seemed to ren- 
der the latter more subservient than was quite agreeable to my 
nature; and, besides, I had seen many sad examples, while 
overlooking my father's business, that the utmost exertions, 
and the best meant services, do not secure the man of busi- 
ness, as he is called, from great loss, and most ungracious treat- 
ment on the part of his employers. The bar, though I was 
conscious of my deficiencies as a public speaker, was the line 
of ambition and liberty ; it was that also for which most of my 
contemporary friends were destined. And, lastly, although I 
would willingly have relieved my father of the labours of his 
business, yet I saw plainty we could not have agreed on some 
particulars if we had attempted to conduct it together, and that 
I should disappoint his expectations if I did not turn to the bar. 
So to that object my studies were directed with great ardour 
and perseverance during the years 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792. 

In the usual course of study, the Soman or Civil Law was 
the first object of my attention — the second, the Municipal 
Law of Scotland. In the course of reading on both subjects, I 
had the advantage of studying in conjunction with my friend 
William Clerk, a man of the most acute intellects and power- 
ful apprehension, and who, should he ever shake loose the fet- 
ters of indolence by which he has been hitherto trammelled, 
cannot fail to be distinguished in the highest degree. We at- 
tended the regular classes of both laws in the University of 
Edinburgh. The Civil Law chair, now worthily filled by Mr. 
Alexander Irving, might at that time be considered as in abey- 
ance, since the person by whom it was occupied had never been 
fit for the situation, and was then almost in a state of dotage. 
But the Scotch Law lectures were those of Mr. David Hume, 
who still continues to occupy that situation with as much 
honour to himself as advantage to his country. I copied over 
his lectures twice with my own hand, from notes taken in the 
class, and when I have had occasion to consult them, I can 
never sufficiently admire the penetration and clearness of con- 
ception which were necessary to the arrangement of the fabric 
of law, formed originally under the strictest influence of feudal 
principles, and innovated, altered, and broken in upon by the 
change of times, of habits, and of manners, until it resembles 
some ancient castle, partly entire, partly ruinous, partly dilapi- 
dated, patched and altered during the succession of ages by a 
thousand additions and combinations, yet still exhibiting, with 
the marks of its antiquity, symptoms of the skill and wisdom 



42 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

of its founders, and capable of being analysed and made the 
subject of a methodical plan by an architect who can under- 
stand the various styles of the different ages in which it was 
subjected to alteration. Such an architect has Mr. Hume been 
to the* law of Scotland, neither wandering into fanciful and 
abstruse disquisitions, which are the more proper subject of the 
antiquary, nor satisfied with presenting to his pupils a dry and 
undigested detail of the laws in their present state, but com- 
bining the past state of our legal enactments with the present, 
and tracing clearly and judiciously the changes which took 
place, and the causes which led to them. 

Under these auspices, I commenced my legal studies. A 
little parlour was assigned me in my father's house, which was 
spacious and convenient, and I took the exclusive possession of 
my new realms with all the feelings of novelty and liberty. 
Let me do justice to the only years of my life in which I applied 
to learning with stern, steady, and undeviating industry. The 
rule of my friend Clerk and myself was, that we should mut- 
ually qualify ourselves for undergoing an examination upon 
certain points of law every morning in the week, Sundays ex- 
cepted. This was at first to have taken place alternately at 
each other's houses, but we soon discovered that my friend's 
resolution was inadequate to severing him from his couch at 
the early hour fixed for this exercitation. Accordingly, I 
agreed to go every morning to his house, which, being at the 
extremity of Prince's Street, New Town, was a walk of two 
miles. With great punctuality, however, I beat him up to his 
task every morning before seven o'clock, and in the course of 
two summers, we went, by way of question and answer, through 
the whole of Heineccius's Analysis of the Institutes and Pan- 
dects, as well as through the smaller copy of Erskine's Insti- 
tutes of the Law of Scotland. This course of study enabled us 
to pass with credit the usual trials, which, by the regulations 
of the Faculty of Advocates, must be undergone by every can- 
didate for admission into their body. My friend William 
Clerk and I passed these ordeals on the same days — namely, 
the Civil Law trial on the [30th June 1791], and the Scots Law 
trial on the [6th July 1792]. On the [11th July 1792], we both 
assumed the gown with all its duties and honours. 

My progress in life during these two or three years had been 
gradually enlarging my acquaintance, and facilitating my en- 
trance into good company. My father and mother, already 
advanced in life, saw little society at home, excepting that 
of near relations, or upon particular occasions, so that I was 



A UTOBIOGRA PI1 Y. 43 

left to form connexions in a great measure for myself. It is 
not difficult for a youth with, a real desire to please and be 
pleased, to make his way into good society in Edinburgh — or 
indeed anywhere ; and my family connexions, if they did not 
greatly further, had nothing to embarrass my progress. I was 
a gentleman, and so welcome anywhere, if so be I could behave 
myself, as Tony Lumpkin says, "in a concatenation accord- 
ingly." 



CHAPTER II. 

Call to the Bar — Early Friendships and Pursuits — Excursions to the 
Highlands and Border — Light-Horse Volunteers — Disappointment in 
Love — Publication of Ballads after Burger. 1792-1797. 

Walter Scott, the eldest son of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, 
appears to have been the first of the family that ever adopted 
a town life, or anything claiming to be classed among the 
learned professions. His branch of the law, however, conld 
not in those days be advantageously prosecuted without exten- 
sive connexions in the country ; his own were too respectable 
not to be of much service to him in his calling, and they were 
cultivated accordingly. His professional visits to Roxburgh- 
shire and Ettrick Eorest were, in the vigour of his life, very 
frequent; and though he was never supposed to have any 
tincture either of romance or poetry in his composition, he 
retained to the last a warm affection for his native district, 
with a certain reluctant flavour of the old feelings and preju- 
dices of the Borderer. I have little to add to Sir Walter's 
short and respectful notice of his father, except that I have 
heard it confirmed by the testimony of many less partial 
observers. " He passed from the cradle to the grave," says 
his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Thomas Scott, "without making an 
enemy or losing a friend. He was a most affectionate parent, 
and if he discouraged, rather than otherwise, his son's early 
devotion to the pursuits which led him to the height of liter- 
ary eminence, it was only because he did not understand what 
such things meant, and considered it his duty to keep his 
young man to that path in which good sense and industry 
might, humanly speaking, be thought sure of success." We 
have, according to William Clerk, a very accurate representa- 
tion of the old gentleman in the elder Eairford of Redgaunt- 
let ; and there is as little doubt that Walter drew from himself 
in the younger Eairford, and from his friend Clerk in the 
Darsie Latimer of that tale. 

His mother was short of stature, and by no means comely, 
at least after the days of her early youth. The physiognomy 

44 



EABLY FRIENDSHIPS AND PURSUITS. 45 

of the poet bore, if tlieir portraits may be trusted, no resem- 
blance to either of his parents ; while, on the other hand, a 
very strong likeness to him is observable in the pictures both 
of the shrewd farmer and sportsman, Eobert of Sandy-Knowe, 
and of the venerable Jacobite, Beardie. But Scott's mother, 
there is no doubt, was, in talents as well as tastes, superior to 
her husband. She had strong powers of observation, with a 
lively relish for the humorous, and was noted for her skill in 
story-telling. She had, moreover, like Irving's mother, a love 
of ancient ballads and Scotch traditions and legends of all 
sorts, and her Calvinistic prejudices did not save her from the 
worship of Shakspeare. Her sister, Christian Rutherford, 
appears to have been still more accomplished ; and as she was 
comparatively young, the intimacy between her and her nephew 
was more like what occurs commonly between a youth and an 
elder sister. In the house of his uncle, Dr. Rutherford, Scott 
must have had access, from his earliest days, to a scientific 
and scholarlike circle of society. His own parents, too, were, 
as we have seen, personal friends of John Home, the author 
of Douglas, at whose villa near Edinburgh young Walter was 
a frequent visitor: but, above all, his intimacy with the son 
of Dr. Adam Fergusson, the moralist and historian, who was 
then one of the chief ornaments of the University, afforded 
easy opportunity of mixing, in as far as his ambition might 
gradually aspire, with the most intellectual and cultivated 
society of his native place. It was under that roof that he 
conversed with Burns when in his seventeenth year. 

I shall only add to what he sets down on the subject of his 
early academical studies, that in this, as in almost every case, 
he appears to have underrated his own attainments. He had, 
indeed, no pretensions to the name of an extensive, far less of 
an accurate, Latin scholar; but he could read, I believe, any 
Latin author, of any age, so as to catch without difficulty his 
meaning ; and although his favourite Latin poet, as well as 
historian, in later days, was Buchanan, he had preserved, or 
subsequently acquired, a strong relish for some others of more 
ancient date. I may mention, in particular, Lucan and Clau- 
dian. The autobiography has informed us of the early period 
at which he enjoyed the real Tasso and Ariosto. I presume 
he had at least as soon as this enabled himself to read Gil 
Bias in the original ; and, in all probability, we may refer to 
the same time of his life, or one not much later, his acquisition 
of as much Spanish as served for the Guerras Civiles de Gre- 
nada, Lazarillo de Tonnes, and, above all, Don Quixote. He 



46 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

read all these languages in after life with about the same facil- 
ity. I never but once heard him attempt to speak any of 
them, and that was when some of the courtiers of Charles X. 
came to Abbotsford, soon after that unfortunate prince took 
up his residence for the second time at Holyroodhouse. Find- 
ing that one or two of these gentlemen could speak no English 
at all, he made some efforts to amuse them in their own lan- 
guage after the champagne had been passing briskly round 
the table; and I was amused next morning with the expres- 
sion of one of the party, who, alluding to the sort of reading 
in which Sir Walter seemed to have chiefly occupied himself, 
said — " Mon Dieu ! comme il estropiait, entre deux vins, le 
Francais du bon sire de Joinville ! " Of all these tongues, as 
of German somewhat later, he acquired as much as Avas need- 
ful for his own purposes, of which a critical study of any 
foreign language made at no time any part. In them he 
sought for incidents, and he found images ; but for the treas- 
ures of diction he was content to dig on British soil. He had 
all he wanted in the old wells of " English undefiled," and the 
still living, though fast shrinking, waters of that sister idiom, 
which had not always, as he flattered himself, deserved the 
name of a dialect. 

As may be said, I believe, with perfect truth of every really 
great man, Scott was self-educated in every branch of knowl- 
edge which he ever turned to account in the works of his 
genius — and he has himself told us that his real studies were 
those lonely and desultory ones of which he has given a copy 
in the first chapter of Waverley, where the hero is represented 
as "driving through the sea of books, like a vessel without 
pilot or rudder ; " that is to say, obeying nothing but the strong 
breath of native inclination. The literary details of that chap- 
ter may all be considered as autobiographical. 

In all the studies of the two or three years preceding his 
call to the bar, his chief associate was William Clerk; and, 
indeed, of all the connexions he formed in life, I now doubt 
if there was one to whom he owed more. He always continued 
to say that Clerk was unsurpassed in strength and acuteness 
of faculties, by any man he had ever conversed with familiarly ; 
and though he has left no literary monument whatever behind 
him, he was from youth to a good old age indefatigable in 
study, and rivalled, I believe, by very few of his contempora- 
ries, either in the variety or the accuracy of his acquired knowl- 
edge. He entered zealously from the first into all Scott's 
antiquarian pursuits, and he it was who mainly aided and stim- 



EARLY FRIENDSHIPS AND PURSUITS. 47 

ulated him throughout the few years which he did devote to 
his proper training for the profession of the bar. But these 
were not all the obligations : it was Clerk that first or mainly 
awakened his social' ambition : it was he that drew him out of 
the company of his father's apprentices, and taught him to 
rise above their clubs and festivities, and the rough irregular 
habits of all their intervals of relaxation. It was probably 
very much in consequence of the tacit influence of this tie that 
he resolved on following the upper and more precarious branch 
of his profession, instead of that in which his father's eldest 
son had, if he chose, the certain prospect of early independence, 
and every likelihood of a plentiful fortune in the end. 

Yet both in his adoption, soon after that friendship began, 
of a somewhat superior tone of manners and habits generally, 
and in his ultimate decision for the bar, as well as in his stren- 
uous preparation during a considerable space of time for that 
career, there is little question that another influence must have 
powerfully co-operated. Of the few early letters of Scott that 
have been preserved, almost all are addressed to Clerk, who 
says, " I ascribe my little handful to a sort of instinctive pro- 
phetic sense of his future greatness;" — but a great mass of 
letters addressed to Scott himself, during his early years, are 
still in being, and they are important documents in his history, 
for, as Southey well remarks, letters often tell more of the 
character of the man they are to be read by than of him who 
writes them. Throughout all these, then, there occurs no 
coarse or even jocular suggestion as to the conduct of Scott in 
that particular, as to which most youths of his then age are so 
apt to lay up stores of self-reproach. In that season of hot and 
impetuous blood he may not have escaped quite blameless ; but 
I have the concurrent testimony of all the most intimate among 
his surviving associates, that he was remarkably free from such 
indiscretions ; that while his high sense of honour shielded him 
from the remotest dream of tampering with female innocence, 
he had an instinctive delicacy about him which made him re- 
coil with utter disgust from low and vulgar debaucheries. His 
friends, I have heard more than one of them confess, used often 
to rally him on the coldness of his nature. By degrees they 
discovered that he had, from almost the dawn of the passions, 
cherished a secret attachment, which continued, through all 
the most perilous stage of life, to act as a romantic charm in 
safeguard of virtue. This was the early and innocent affection 
to which we owe the tenderest pages, not only of Redgauntlet, 
but of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and of ilokeby. In all of 



48 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

these works the heroine has certain distinctive features, drawn 
from one and the same haunting dream of his manly adoles- 
cence. 

It was about 1790, according to Mr. William Clerk, that 
Scott was observed to lay aside that carelessness, not to say 
slovenliness, as to dress, which used to furnish matter for jok- 
ing at the beginning of their acquaintance. He now did him- 
self more justice in these little matters, became fond of mixing 
in general female society, and, as his friend expresses it, " be- 
gan to set up for a squire of dames." 

His personal appearance at this time was not unengaging. 
A lady of high rank, who well remembers him in the Old 
Assembly Rooms, says, " Young Walter Scott was a comely 
creature."' x He had outgrown the sallowness of early ill health, 
and had a fresh brilliant complexion. His eyes were clear, 
open, and well set, with a changeful radiance, to which teeth 
of the most pefect regularity and whiteness lent their assistance, 
while the noble expanse and elevation of the brow gave to the 
whole aspect a dignity far above the charm of mere features. 
His smile was always delightful ; and I can easily fancy the 
peculiar intermixture of tenderness and gravity, with playful 
innocent hilarity and humour in the expression, as being well 
calculated to fix a fair lady's eye. His figure, excepting the 
blemish in one limb, must in those days have been eminently 
handsome ; tall, much above the usual standard, it was cast in 
the very mould of a young Hercules ; the head set on with 
singular grace, the throat and chest after the truest model of 
the antique, the hands delicately finished ; the whole outline 
that of extraordinary vigour, without as yet a touch of clumsi- 
ness. When he had acquired a little facility of manner, his 
conversation must have been such as could have dispensed with 
any exterior advantages, and certainly brought swift forgive- 
ness for the one unkindness of nature. I have heard him, in 
talking of this part of his life, say, with an arch simplicity of 
look and tone, which those who were familiar with him can fill 
in for themselves — " It was a proud night with me when I 
first found that a pretty young woman could think it worth her 
while to sit and talk with me, hour after hour, in a corner of 
the ball-room, while all the world were capering in our view."" 

I believe, however, that the " pretty young woman " here spe- 
cially alluded to, had occupied his attention before he ever ap- 
peared in the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms, or any of his friends 
took note of him as " setting up for a squire of dames." I have 

1 The late Duchess Countess of Sutherland. 



EABLY FRIENDSHIPS AND PUB SUITS. 49 

been told that their acquaintance began in the Greyfriars' 
churchyard, where rain beginning to fall one Sunday as the 
congregation were dispersing, Scott happened to offer his um- 
brella, and the tender being accepted, so escorted the lady of 
the green mantle to her residence, which proved to be at no great 
distance from his own. 1 To return from church together had, it 
seems, grown into something like a custom before they met in 
society, Mrs. Scott being of the party. It then appeared that 
she and the lady's mother had been companions in their youth, 
though, both living secludedly, they had scarcely seen each 
other for many years ; and the two matrons now renewed their 
former intercourse. But no acquaintance appears to have ex- 
isted between the fathers of the young people, until things had 
advanced in appearance farther than met the approbation of 
the good Clerk to the Signet. 

Being aware that the young lady — 'Margaret, daughter of 
Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belches of Invermay, had 
prospects of fortune far above his son's, Mr. Scott conceived it 
his duty to give her parents warning that he observed a degree 
of intimacy which, if allowed to go on, might involve the par- 
ties in pain and disappointment. He had heard his son talk of 
a contemplated excursion to the part of the country in which 
his neighbour's estates lay, and not doubting that Walter's 
real object was different from that which he announced, intro- 
duced himself with a frank statement that he wished no such 
affair to proceed, without the express sanction of those most 
interested in the happiness of persons as yet too young to calcu- 
late consequences for themselves. — The northern Baronet had 
heard nothing of the young apprentice's intended excursion, and 
appeared to treat the whole business very lightly. He thanked 
Mr. Scott for his scrupulous attention — but added, that he 
believed he was mistaken; and this paternal interference, 
which Walter did not hear of till long afterwards, produced no 
change in his relations with the object of his growing attach- 
ment. 

I have neither the power nor the wish to give in detail the 
sequel of this story. It is sufficient to say, at present, that 
after he had through several years nourished the dream of an 
ultimate union with this lady, his hopes terminated in her 
being married to the late Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, Bar- 

1 In one of his latest essays we read — " There have been instances of 
love-tales being favourably received in England, when told under an 
umbrella, and in the middle of a shower." — Miscellaneous Prose Works, 
vol. xviii. p. 390. 



50 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

onet, a gentleman of the highest character, to whom some affec- 
tionate allusions occur in one of the greatest of his works, and 
who lived to act the part of a most generous friend to his early 
rival throughout the anxieties and distresses of 1826 and 1827. 
The actual dispersion of the romantic vision and its immediate 
consequences will be mentioned in due time. 

Redgauntlet shadows very distinctly many circumstances 
connected with the first grand step in the professional history 
of Alan Fairford. The real thesis, however, was on the Title 
of the Pandects, Concerning the disposal of the dead bodies of 
Criminals. It was dedicated (I doubt not by the careful fa- 
ther's advice) to his friend and neighbour in George's Square, 
Macqueen of Braxfield, Lord Justice-Clerk (or President of 
the Supreme Criminal Court) of Scotland. Darsie was present 
at Alan's " bit chack of dinner," and the old Clerk of the Sig- 
net was very joyous on the occasion. 

I have often heard both Alan and Darsie laugh over their 
reminiscences of the important day when they "put on the 
gown." After the ceremony was completed, and they had 
mingled for some time with the crowd of barristers in the 
Outer Court, Scott said to his comrade, mimicking the air and 
tone of a Highland lass waiting at the Cross of Edinburgh to 
be hired for the harvest work — " We've stood here an hour by 
the Tron, ninny, and de'il a ane has speered our price." Some 
friendly solicitor, however, gave him a guinea fee before the 
Court rose ; and as they walked down the High Street together, 
he said to Mr. Clerk, in passing a hosier's shop — "This is a 
sort of a wedding-day, Willie ; I think I must go in and buy 
me a new night-cap." He did so accordingly ; but his first fee 
of any consequence was expended on a silver taper-stand for 
his mother, which the old lady used to point to with great 
satisfaction, as it stood on her chimney-piece five-and-twenty 
years afterwards. 

The friends had assumed the gown only the day before the 
Court of Session rose for the autumn vacation, and Scott 
appears to have escaped immediately afterwards to the famil- 
iar scenery of Kelso, where his kind uncle Robert, the retired 
East Indian Captain, had acquired the pretty villa of Rose- 
bank, overhanging the Tweed. He had on a former occasion 
made an excursion into Northumberland as far as Flodden, and 
given, in a letter to Mr. Clerk, the results of a close inspection 
of that famous battle-field. He now induced his uncle to 
accompany him in another Northumbrian expedition, which 
extended to Hexham, where the grand Saxon Cathedral was 



EXCURSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 51 

duly studied. An epistle to Clerk (Sept. 13) gives this picture 
of Ms existence after returning from that trip : — "I am loung- 
ing about the country here, to speak sincerely, as idle as the 
day is long. Two old companions of mine, brothers of Mr. 
Walker of Wooden, having come to this country, we have 
renewed a great intimacy. As they live directly upon the 
opposite bank of the river, we have signals agreed upon by 
which we concert a plan of operations for the day. They are 
both officers, and very intelligent young fellows, and what is of 
some consequence, have a brace of fine greyhounds. Yester- 
day forenoon we killed seven hares, so you see how plenty the 
game is with us. I have turned a keen duck-shooter, though 
my success is not very great ; and when wading through the 
mosses upon this errand, accoutred with the long gun, a jacket, 
musquito trousers, and a rough cap, I might well pass for one 
of my redoubted moss-trooper progenitors, Walter Fire-the- 
Braes, or rather Willie wi' the Bolt-foot. For about-doors' 
amusement, I have constructed a seat in a large tree, which 
spreads its branches horizontally over the Tweed. This is a 
favourite situation of mine for reading, especially in a day like 
this, when the west wind rocks the branches on which I am 
perched, and the river rolls its waves below me of a turbid blood 
colour. I have, moreover, cut an embrasure, through which I 
can lire upon the gulls, herons, and cormorants, as they fly 
screaming past my nest. To crown the whole, I have carved 
an inscription upon it in the ancient Roman taste." 

It was, however, within a few days after Scott's return from 
his excursion to Hexham, that he made another expedition of 
more importance to the history of his life. While attending 
the Michaelmas head-court at Jedburgh, he was introduced to 
Mr. Robert Shortreed, who spent the greater part of his life in 
the enjoyment of much respect as Sheriff-substitute of Rox- 
burghshire. Scott expressed his wish to visit the then wild 
and inaccessible district of Liddesdale, particularly with a 
view to examine the ruins of the famous castle of Hermitage, 
and to pick up some of the ancient riding ballads, said to be 
still preserved among the descendants of the moss-troopers who 
had followed the banner of the Douglasses, when lords of that 
grim and remote fastness ; and his new acquaintance offered 
to be his guide. 

During seven successive years he made a raid, as he called 
it, into Liddesdale, in company with Mr. Shortreed ; exploring 
every rivulet to its source, and every ruined peel from founda- 
tion to battlement. At this time no wheeled carriage had ever 



52 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

been seen in the district — the first, indeed, that ever appeared 
there was a gig, driven by Scott himself for a part of his way, 
when on the last of these seven excursions. There was no inn 
nor pnblic-house of any kind in the whole valley ; the travellers 
passed from the shepherd's hnt to the minister's manse, and 
again from the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the rough 
and jolly welcome of the homestead ; gathering, wherever they 
went, songs and tunes, and occasionally more tangible relics 
of antiquity — even such "a rowth of auld nicknackets" as 
Burns ascribes to Captain Grose. To these rambles Scott 
owed much of the materials of his " Minstrelsy of the Bor- 
der ; " and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the liv- 
ing manners of these unsophisticated regions, which constitutes 
the chief charm of one of the most charming of his prose 
works. But how soon he had any definite object before him 
in his researches, seems very doubtful. "He was maMn' liim- 
sell a' the time," said Mr. Shortreed ; " but he didna ken maybe 
what he was about till years had passed : At first he thought 
o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun." 

"In those days," says the Memorandum before me, "advo- 
cates were not so plenty — at least about Liddesdale ; " 1 and 
the worthy Sheriff -substitute goes on to describe the sort of 
bustle, not unmixed with alarm, produced at the first farm- 
house they visited (Willie Elliot's at Millburnholm), when the 
honest man was informed of the quality of one of his guests. 
When they dismounted, accordingly, he received the stranger 
with great ceremony, and insisted upon himself leading his 
horse to the stable. Shortreed accompanied Willie, however, 
and the latter, after taking a deliberate peep at Scott, " out by 
the edge of the door-cheek," whispered, "Weel, Robin, I say, 
de'il hae me if I's be a bit feared for him now ; he's just a 
chielcl like ourselves, I think." Half-a-dozen dogs of all 
degrees had already gathered round "the advocate," and his 
way of returning their compliments had set Willie at his ease. 

According to Mr. Shortreed, this good-man of Millburnholm 
was the great original of Dandie Dinmont. As he seems to 
have been the first of these upland sheep-farmers that Scott 
ever knew, there can be little doubt that he sat for some parts 
of that inimitable portraiture ; and it is certain that the James 

1 1 am obliged to Mr. John Elliot Shortreed, for some memoranda of 
his father's conversations on this subject. I had, however, many oppor- 
tunities of hearing Mr. Shortreed's stories from his own lips, having often 
been under his hospitable roof in company with Sir Walter, who, to the 
last, was his old friend's guest whenever business took him to Jedburgh. 



EXCURSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 53 

Davidson, who carried the name of Dandie to his grave with 
him, and whose thoroughbred deathbed scene is told in the 
Notes* to Guy Mannering, was first pointed out to Scott by Mr. 
Shortreed himself, several years after the novel had established 
the man's celebrity all over the Border; some accidental re- 
port about his terriers, and their odd names, having alone been 
turned to account in the tale. But I have the best reason to 
believe that the kind and manly character of Dandie, the gentle 
and delicious one of his wife, and some at least of the most 
picturesque peculiarities of the menage at Charlieshope, were 
filled up from Scott's observation, years after this period, of a 
family, with one of whose members he had, through the best 
part of his life, a close and affectionate connexion. To those 
who were familiar with him, I have perhaps already sufficiently 
indicated the early home of his dear friend William Laidlaw, 
among " the braes of Yarrow." 

They dined at Millburnholm, and after having lingered over 
Willie Elliot's punch-bowl, until, in Mr. Shortreed's phrase, 
they were "half glowrin," mounted their steeds again, and 
proceeded to Dr. Elliot's at Cleughhead, where (" for," says 
my Memorandum, " folk were na very nice in those days ") the 
two travellers slept in one bed — as, indeed, seems to have been 
the case throughout most of their excursions in this district. 
Dr. Elliot had already a MS. collection of ballads ; but he now 
exerted himself, for several years, with redoubled diligence, in 
seeking out the living depositaries* of such lore among the 
darker recesses of the mountains. "The Doctor," says Mr. 
Shortreed, " would have gane through fire and water for Sir 
Walter, when he ance kenned him." 

Next morning they seem to have ridden a long way, for 
the express purpose of, visiting one " auld Thomas o' Twizzle- 
hope," — another Elliot, I suppose, who was celebrated for his 
skill on the Border pipe, and in particular for being in posses- 
sion of the real lilt of Dick o' the Cow. Before starting, that 
is, at six o'clock, the ballad-hunters had, "just to lay the stom- 
ach, a devilled duck or twae, and some London porter." Auld 
Thomas found them, nevertheless, well disposed for " break- 
fast " on their arrival at Twizzlehope ; and this being over, he 
delighted them with one of the most hideous and unearthly of 
all the specimens of " riding music," and, moreover, with con- 
siderable libations of whisky-punch, manufactured in a certain 
wooden vessel, resembling a very small milk-pail, which he 
called Wisdom, because it "made" only a few spoonfuls of 
spirits — though he had the art of replenishing it so adroitly, 



54 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

that it had been celebrated for fifty years as more fatal to 
sobriety than any bowl in the parish. Having done due hon- 
our to Wisdom, they again mounted, and proceeded over moss 
and moor to some other equally hospitable master of the pipe. 
" Eh me ! " says Shortreed, " sic an endless fund o' humour and 
drollery as he then had wi' him ! Never ten yards but we were 
either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, 
how brawlie he suited hinisel' to everybody ! He ay did as 
the lave did ; never made himseP the great man, or took ony airs 
in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, 
grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk — (this, how- 
ever, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare) — but, drunk 
or sober, he was ay the gentleman. He looked excessively 
heavy and stupid when he was fou, but he was never out o' 
gude-humour." 

On reaching, one evening, some Charlieshope or other (I for- 
get the name) among those wildernesses, they found a kindly 
reception as usual ; but to their agreeable surprise, after some 
days of hard living, a measured and orderly hospitality as 
respected liquor. Soon after supper, at which a bottle of elder- 
berry wine alone had been produced, a young student of divin- 
ity, who happened to be in the house, was called upon to take 
the " big ha' Bible," in the good old fashion of Burns's Satur- 
day Night ; and some progress had been already made in the' 
service, when the goodman of the farm, whose " tendency was 
soporific," scandalised his" wife and the dominie by starting 
suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a stento- 
rian exclamation of " By , here's the keg at last ! " and in 

tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy herdsmen, 
whom, on hearing a day before of the advocate's approaching 
visit, he had dispatched to a certain smuggler's haunt, at some 
considerable distance, in quest of a supply of run brandy from 
the Solway Frith. The pious " exercise " of the household was 
hopelessly interrupted. With a thousand apologies for his 
hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly Elliot, or Armstrong, 
had the welcome keg mounted on the table without a moment's 
delay, — and gentle and simple, not forgetting the dominie, 
continued carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon 
the party. Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in 
company with his Liddesdale companion, to mimic the sudden 
outburst of his old host, on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, 
which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg — the con- 
sternation of the dame — and the rueful despair with which 
the young clergyman closed the book. 



EXCUBSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 55 

" It was in that same season, I think," says Mr. Shortreed, 
"that Sir Walter got from Dr. Elliott the large old border 
war-horn, which ye may still see hanging in the armonry at 
Abbotsford. How great he was when he was made master 
o' that! I believe it had been found in Hermitage Castle — 
and one of the Doctor's servants had nsed it many a day 
as a grease-horn for his scythe, before they discovered its 
history. When cleaned out, it was never a hair the worse — 
the original chain, hoop, and mouth-piece of steel, were all 
entire, just as you now see them. Sir Walter carried it home 
all the way from Liddesdale to Jedburgh, slung about his 
neck like Johnny Gilpin's bottle, while I was intrusted with an 
ancient bridle-bit, which we had likewise picked up. 

' The feint o' pride — na pride had he . . . 
A lang kail-gully hung down by his side, 
And a great meikle nowt-horn to rout on had he,' 

and meikle and sair we routed on't, and ' notched and blew, 
wi' micht and main.' what pleasant days ! And then a' 
the nonsense we had cost us naething. We never put hand 
in pocket for a week on end. Toll-bars there were nane — 
and indeed I think our haill charges were a feed o' corn to 
our horses in the gangin' and comin' at Riccartoun mill." 

It is a pity that we have no letters of Scott's describing 
this first raid into Liddesdale ; but as he must have left Kelso 
for Edinburgh very soon after its conclusion, he probably chose 
to be the bearer of his own tidings. 

I have found, however, two note-books, inscribed "Walter 
Scott, 1792," containing a variety of scraps and hints which may 
help us to fill up our notion of his private studies during that 
year. We have here a most miscellaneous collection, in which 
there is whatever might have been looked for, with perhaps 
the single exception of original verse. One of the books opens 
with " Vegtam's Kvitha, or The Descent of Odin, with the 
Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the English poetical version 
of Mr. Gray ; with some account of the death of Balder, both 
as narrated in the Eclda, and as handed down to us by the 
northern historians — Auctore Gualtero Scott" The Norse 
original, and the two versions, are then transcribed ; and the 
historical account appended, extending to seven closely written 
quarto pages, was, I doubt not, read before one or other of his 
debating societies. Next comes a page, headed "Pecuniary 
Distress of Charles the First," and containing a transcript of 
a receipt for some plate lent to the King in 1643. He then 



56 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

copies Langhorne's Owen of Carron ; the verses of Canute, on 
passing Ely ; the lines to a cuckoo, given by Warton as the 
oldest specimen of English verse ; a translation, " by a gentle- 
man in Devonshire," of the death-song of Regner Lodbrog; 
and the beautiful quatrain omitted in Gray's Elegy, — 

' ' There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, ' ' &c. 

After this we have an Italian canzonet on the praises of blue 
eyes (which were much in favour at this time) ; several pages 
of etymologies from Ducange; some more of notes on the 
Morte Arthur ; extracts from the Books of Adjournal about 
Dame Janet Beaton, the Lady of Branxome of the Lay of the 
Last Minstrel, and her husband " Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, 
called Wicked Watt; " other extracts about witches and fairies ; 
various couplets from Hall's Satires ; a passage from Albania ; 
notes on the Second Sight, with extracts from Aubrey and 
Glanville ; a " List of Ballads to be discovered or recovered ; " 
extracts from Guerin de Montgiave ; and after many more 
similar entries, a table of the Mseso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and 
Runic alphabets ; — with a fourth section, headed German, but 
left blank. 

In November 1792, Scott and Clerk began their regular at- 
tendance at the Parliament House, and Scott, to use Mr. Clerk's 
words, "by and by crept into a tolerable share of such business 
as may be expected from a writer's connexion." By this we 
are to understand that he was employed from time to time by 
his father, and probably a few other solicitors, in that dreary 
every-day taskwork, chiefly of long "written informations, and 
other papers for .the Court, on which young counsellors of the 
Scotch Bar were then expected to bestow a great deal of trouble 
for very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with scarcely a 
chance of finding reserved for their hands any matter that 
could elicit the display of superior knowledge or understand- 
ing. He had also his part in the cases of persons suing in 
forma pauperis; but how. little important those that came to 
his share were, and how slender was the impression they had 
left on his mind, we may gather from a note on Bedgauntlet, 
wherein he signifies his doubts whether he really had ever been 
engaged in what he has certainly made the cause cetebre of 
Poor Peter Peebles. 

But he soon became as famous for his powers of story-telling 
among the lawyers of the Outer-House, as he had been among 
the companions of his High-School days. The place where 
these idlers mostly congregated was called, it seems, by a name 



EXCUBSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 57 

which, sufficiently marks the date — it was The Mountain. Here, 
as Eoger North says of the Court of King's Bench in his early 
day, "there was more news than law; " — here hour after hour 
passed away, month after month, and year after year, in the 
interchange of light-hearted merriment among a circle of young 
men, more than one of whom, in after times, attained the 
highest honours of the profession. Among the most intimate 
of Scott's daily associates from this time, and during all his 
subsequent attendance at the Bar, were, besides various since 
eminent persons that have been already named, the first legal 
antiquary of our time in Scotland, Mr. Thomas Thomson, and 
William Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinedder. Mr. Clerk re- 
members complaining one morning on finding the group con- 
vulsed with laughter, that Duns Scotus had been forestalling 
him in a good story, which he had communicated privately the 
day before — adding, moreover, that his friend had not only 
stolen, but disguised it. "Why," answered he, skilfully 
waving the main charge, "this is always the way with the 
Baronet. 1 He is continually saying that I change his stories, 
whereas in fact I only put a cocked hat on their heads, and 
stick a cane into their hands — to make them fit for going into 
company." 

Some interest had been excited in Edinburgh as to the rising 
literature of Germany, by an essay of Mackenzie's in 1778, 
and a subsequent version of The Bobbers, by Mr. Tytler (Lord 
Woodhouselee). About Christmas 1792, a German class was 
formed under a Dr. Willick, which included Scott, Clerk, 
Thomson, and Erskine; all of whom soon qualified them- 
selves to taste the beauties of Schiller and Goethe in the 
original. This class contributed greatly to Scott's familiarity 
with Erskine; a familiarity which grew into one of the 
warmest and closest of his friendships. All the others above 
named, except Erskine, were by descent and connexion 
Whigs ; and though politics never shook the affection of any 
of these early companions, the events and controversies of the 
immediately ensuing years could not but disturb, more or less, 
the social habits of young barristers who adopted opposite 
views on the French Bevolution and the policy of Pitt. On 
such subjects Erskine entirely sympathised with Scott; and 
though in many respects, indeed in strength of mind and 
character, and in the general turn of opinion and manners, 

1 Duns Scotus was an old college-club nickname for Walter §cott, a 
tribute to his love of antiquities. Clerk was with the same set the Baro- 
net, as belonging to ^he family of the Baronets of Pennycuick. 



58 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

others of his contemporaries must always have seemed far 
more likely to suit Walter Scott, Erskine became, and con- 
tinued during the brightest part of his life to be, the nearest 
and most confidential of all his Edinburgh associates. Nor 
can it be doubted that he exercised, at the active period we 
have now reached, a very important influence on his friend's 
literary tastes, and especially on his German studies. William 
Erskine was the son of an Episcopalian clergyman in Perth- 
shire, of a good family, but far from wealthy. He had received 
his early education at Glasgow, where he was boarded under 
the roof of Andrew Macdonald, the author o/ A r imonda, who 
then officiated as minister to a small congregation of Episcopa- 
lian nonconformists. From this unfortunate but very ingenious 
man, Erskine had derived, in boyhood, a strong passion for old 
English literature, more especially the Elizabethan dramatists ; 
which, however, he combined with a far livelier relish for the 
classics of antiquity than either Scott or his master ever possessed. 
From the beginning, accordingly, Scott had in Erskine a moni- 
tor who, entering most warmly into his taste for national lore 
— the life of the past — and the bold and picturesque style of 
the original English school — was constantly urging the adi'an- 
tages to be derived from combining with its varied and mascu- 
line breadth of delineation such attention to the minor graces 
of arrangement and diction as might conciliate the fastidious- 
ness of modern taste. Directed, as Scott mainly was in the 
ultimate determination of his literary ambition, by the example 
of the great founders of the German drama and romance, he 
appears to have run at first no trivial hazard of adopting the 
extravagances, both of thought and language, which he found 
blended in their works with such a captivating display of 
genius, and genius employed on subjects so much in unison 
with the deepest of his own juvenile predilections. His 
friendly critic was just as well as delicate ; and severity as 
to the mingled absurdities and vulgarities of German detail, 
commanded deliberate attention from one who admired not less 
enthusiastically than himself the sublimity and pathos of his 
new favourites. 

In March 1793, when the Court rose, he proceeded into Gallo- 
way, in order to make himself acquainted with the case of a 
certain Rev. Mr. M'Naught, minister of Girthon, whose trial, 
on charges of habitual drunkenness, singing of lewd and pro- 
fane songs, dancing and toying at a penny-wedding with a 
" sweetie wife " (that is, an itinerant vender of gingerbread, 
&c), and, moreover, of promoting irregular marriages as a 



EXCUBSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 59 

justice of the peace, was about to take place before the Gen- 
eral Assembly of the Kirk. 

The " case of M'Naught " (fee five guineas) is the earliest of 
Scott's legal papers that has been discovered ; and it is perhaps 
as plausible a statement as the circumstances could bear. In 
May he was called on to support it at the bar of the Assem- 
bly; and he did so in a speech of considerable length. This 
was by far the most important business in which any solicitor 
had as yet employed him, and The Mountain mustered strong 
in the gallery. He began in a low voice, but by degrees 
gathered more confidence ; and when it became necessary for 
him to analyse the evidence touching the penny-wedding, re- 
peated some coarse specimens of his client's alleged conversa- 
tion, in a tone so bold and free, that he was called to order with 
great austerity by one of the leading members of the Venerable 
Court. This seemed to confuse him not a little ; so when, by 
and by, he had to recite a stanza of one of M'Naught's convivial 
ditties, he breathed it out in a faint and hesitating style : where- 
upon, thinking he needed encouragement, the allies in the 
gallery astounded the Assembly by cordial shouts of hear! 
hear! — encore! encore! They were immediately turned out, 
and Scott got through the rest of his harangue very little to 
his own satisfaction. 

He believed, in a word, that he had made a complete failure, 
and issued from the Court in a melancholy mood. At the door 
he found Adam Fergusson waiting to inform him that the 
brethren so unceremoniously extruded from the gallery had 
sought shelter in a neighbouring tavern, where they hoped he 
would join them. He complied with the invitation, but seemed 
for a long while incapable of enjoying the merriment of his 
friends. " Come, Duns" cried the Baronet ; — " cheer up, 
man, and fill another tumbler; here's . . . going to give us 
The Tailor" — "Ah!" he answered with a groan — "the 
tailor was a better man than me, sirs ; for he didna venture 
ben until he kenned the way." A certain comical old song, 
which had, perhaps, been a favourite with the minister of 
Girth on — 

" The tailor he came here to sew, 
And the weel he kenn'd the way o't," &c. 

was, however, sung and chorussed ; and the evening ended in 
High Jinks. 

Mr. M'Naught was deposed from the ministry. It is to be 
observed, that the research made Avith a view to pleading this 



60 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

cause, carried Scott for the first, and I believe for the last 
time, into the scenery of his Guy Mannering ; and several of 
the names of the minor characters of the novel (Jf'Gaffog, for 
example) appear in the list of witnesses. 

If the preceding autumn forms a remarkable point in his 
history, as first introducing him to the manners of the wilder 
Border country, the summer which followed left traces of 
equal importance. He then visited some of the finest districts 
of Stirlingshire and Perthshire ; and not in the percursory 
manner of his more boyish expeditions but taking up his resi- 
dence for a week or ten days in succession at the family resi- 
dences of several of his young allies of The Mountain, and 
from thence familiarising himself at leisure with the country 
and the people round about. In this way he lingered some 
time at Tullibody, the seat of the father of Sir Ralph Aber- 
cromby, and grandfather of his friend George Abercromby; 
and heard from the old gentleman's own lips the narrative of 
a journey which he had been obliged to make to the retreat of 
Rob Roy. The venerable laird told how he was received by 
the cateran " with much courtesy," in a cavern exactly such as 
that of Bean Lean; dined on collops cut from some of his own 
cattle, which he recognised hanging by their heels from the 
rocky roof beyond ; and returned in all safety, after concluding 
a bargain of black-mail — in virtue of which annual payment, 
Rob Roy guaranteed the future security of his herds against, 
not his own followers merely, but all freebooters whatever. 
Scott next visited his friend Edmonstoune, at Newton, a beauti- 
ful seat close to the ruins of the once magnificent Castle of 
Doune, and heard another aged gentleman's vivid recollections 
of all that happened there when John Home, the author of 
Douglas, and other Hanoverian prisoners, escaped from the 
Highland garrison in 1745. Proceeding towards the sources 
of the Teith, he was received for the first time under a roof 
which, in subsequent years, he regularly revisited, that of 
another of his associates, Buchanan, the young Laird of Cam- 
busmore. It was thus that the scenery of Loch Katrine came 
to be so associated with "the recollection of many a dear 
friend and merry expedition of former days," that to compose 
the Lady of the Lake was " a labour of love, and no less so to 
recall the manners and incidents introduced." x It was start- 
ing from the same house, when the poem itself had made 
some progress, that he put to the test the practicability of rid- 
ing from the banks of Loch Yennachar to the Castle of Stirling 
1 Introduction to The Lady. 



EXCURSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 61 

within the brief space which he had assigned to Fitz-James's 
Grey Bayard, after the duel with Roderick Dim ; and the prin- 
cipal land-marks in the description of that fiery progress are 
so many hospitable mansions, all familiar to him at the same 
period : — Blairdrummond, the residence of Lord Kaimes ; 
Ochtertyre, that of John Ramsay, the scholar and antiquary 
(now best remembered for his kind and sagacious advice to 
Burns) ; and " the lofty brow of ancient Kier," the fine seat of 
the chief family of the name of Stirling; from which, to say 
nothing of remoter objects, the prospect has on one hand the 
rock of " Snowdon," and in front the field of Bannockburn. 

Another resting place was Craighall, in Perthshire, the seat 
of the Rattrays, a family related to Mr. Clerk, who accompa- 
nied him. From the position of this striking place, as Mr. 
■ Clerk at once perceived, and as the author afterwards confessed 
to him, that of Tully-Veolan was faithfully copied; though in 
the description of the house itself, and its gardens, many 
features were adopted from Bruutsfield and Ravelstone. Mr. 
Clerk told me that he went through the first chapters of Wav- 
erley without more than a vague suspicion of the new novelist ; 
but that when he read the arrival at Tully-Veolan, his suspicion 
was converted into certainty, and he handed the book to a 
common friend of his and the author's, saying, "This is 
Scott's — and I'll lay a bet you'll find such and such things in 
the next chapter." I hope to be forgiven for mentioning the 
circumstance that flashed conviction. In the course of a ride 
from Craighall, they had both become considerably fagged and 
heated, and Clerk, seeing the smoke of a clachan a little way 
before them, ejaculated — " How agreeable if we should here 
fall in with one of those signposts where a red lion predomi- 
nates over a punch-bowl ! " The phrase happened to tickle 
Scott's fancy — he often introduced it on similar occasions 
afterwards — and at the distance of twenty years Mr. Clerk 
was at no loss to recognise an old acquaintance in the " huge 
bear " which " predominates " over the stone basin in the 
courtyard of Baron Bradwardine. 

I believe the longest stay was at Meigle in Forfarshire, the 
seat of Patrick Murray of Simprim, whose passion for antiq- 
uities, especially military antiquities, had peculiarly endeared 
him both to Scott and Clerk. Here Adam Fergusson, too, 
was of the party ; and I have often heard them each and all 
dwell on the thousand scenes of adventure and merriment 
which diversified that visit. In the village churchyard, close 
beneath Mr. Murray's gardens, tradition still points out the 



62 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

tomb of Queen Guenever ; and the whole district abounds in 
objects of historical interest. Amidst them they spent their 
wandering days, while their evenings passed in the joyous 
festivity of a wealthy young bachelor's establishment, or 
sometimes under the roofs of neighbours less refined than 
their host, the Balmawhapples of the Braes of Angus. From 
Meigle they made a trip to Dunottar Castle, the ruins of the 
huge old fortress of the Earls Marischall, and it was in the 
churchyard of that place that Scott then saw for the first 
and last time Peter Paterson, the living Old Mortality. He 
and Mr. Walker, the minister of the parish, found the poor 
man refeshing the epitaphs on the tombs of certain Camero- 
nians who had fallen under the oppressions of James the 
Second's brief insanity. Being invited into the manse after 
dinner to take a glass of whisky punch, " to which he was 
supposed to have no objections," he joined the minister's party 
accordingly ; but " he was in bad humour," says Scott, " and, to 
use his own phrase, had no freedom for conversation. His 
spirit had been sorely vexed by hearing, in a certain Aberdo- 
nian kirk, the psalmody directed by a pitch-pipe or some 
similar instrument, which was to Old Mortality the abomina- 
tion of abominations." 

It was also while he had his headquarters at Meigle at this 
time, that Scott visited for the first time Glammis, the resi- 
dence of the Earls of Strathmore, by far the noblest specimen 
of the real feudal castle, entire and perfect, that had as yet 
come under his inspection. What its aspect was when he first 
saw it, and how grievously he lamented the change it had 
undergone when he revisited it some years afterwards, he has 
recorded in one of the most striking passages of his Essay on 
Landscape Gardening. 

The night he spent at the yet unprofaned Glammis in 1793 
was, as he tells us in his Demonology, one of the "tivo periods 
distant from each other " at which he could recollect experi- 
encing "that degree of superstitious awe which his country- 
men call erne." " After a very hospitable reception from the 
late Peter Proctor, seneschal of the castle, I was conducted," 
he says, "to my apartment in a distant part of the building. 
I must own, that when I heard door after door shut, after my 
conductor had retired, I began to consider myself as too far 
from the living, and somewhat too near the dead," &c. But 
one of his notes on Waverley touches a certain not unimportant 
part of the story more distinctly ; for we are there informed, 
that the silver bear of Tully-Veolan, " the poculum potatorium 



EXCURSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 63 

of the valiant baron/' had its prototype at Glammis — a mas- 
sive beaker of silver, double gilt, moulded into the form of a 
lion, the name and bearing of the Earls of Strathmore, and 
containing about an English pint of wine. " The author," he 
says, " ought perhaps to be ashamed of recording that he had 
the honour of swallowing the contents of the lion; and the 
recollection of the feat suggested the story of the Bear of 
Bradwarcline." 

From this pleasant tour, so rich in its results, he returned 
in time to attend the autumnal assizes at Jedburgh, on which 
occasion he made his first appearance as counsel in a criminal 
court ; and had the satisfaction of helping a veteran poacher 
and sheep-stealer to escape through some of the meshes of the 
law. "You're a lucky scoundrel/' Scott whispered to his 
client, when the verdict was pronounced. — " I'm just o' your 
mind," quoth the desperado, " and I'll send ye a maukin [viz. 
a hare] the morn, man." I am not sure whether it was at 
these assizes or the next in the same town, that he had less 
success in the case of a certain notorious housebreaker. The 
man, however, was well aware that no skill could have bafiied 
the clear evidence against him, and was, after his fashion, 
grateful for such exertions as had been made in his behalf. 
He requested the young advocate to visit him once more 
before he left the place. Scott's curiosity induced him to 
accept this invitation, and his friend, as soon as they were 
alone together in the condemned cell, said — "I am very sorry, 
sir, that I have no fee to offer you — so let me beg your accept- 
ance of two bits of advice which may be useful perhaps when 
you come to have a house of your own. I am done with prac- 
tice, you see, and here is my legacy. ISFever keep a large 
watchdog out of doors — we can always silence them cheaply 
— indeed if it be a dog, 'tis easier than whistling — but tie a 
little tight yelping terrier within ; and secondly, put no trust 
in nice, clever, gimcrack locks — the only thing that bothers 
us is a huge old heavy one, no matter how simple the con- 
struction, — and the ruder and rustier the key, so much the 
better for the housekeeper." I remember hearing him tell this 
story some thirty years after at a Judges' dinner at Jedburgh, 
and he summed it up with a rhyme — "Ay, ay, my lord," (he 
addressed his friend Lord Meadowbank) — 

• ; ' Yelping terrier, rusty key, 

Was Walter Scott's best Jeddart fee.' " 

The winter of 1793^ appears to have been passed like the 



64 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

preceding one : the German class resumed their sittings ; Scott 
spoke in his debating club on the questions of Parliamentary 
Ref orm and the Inviolability of the Person of the First Magis- 
trate ; his love-affair continued on the same footing as before ; 
— and for the rest, like the young heroes in Redgauntlet, he 
" swept the boards of the Parliament House with the skirts of 
his gown; laughed, and made others laugh; drank claret at 
Bayle's, Fortune's, and Walker's, and ate oysters in the Cov- 
enant Close." On his desk "the new novel most in repute lay 
snugly intrenched beneath Stair's Institute, or an open volume 
of Decisions ; " and his dressing-table was littered with " old 
play-bills, letters respecting a meeting of the Faculty, Rules 
of the Speculative, Syllabus of Lectures — all the miscellane- 
ous contents of a young advocate's pocket, which contains 
everything but briefs and bank-notes." His professional occu- 
pation was still very slender ; but he took a lively interest in 
the proceedings of the criminal court, and more especially in 
those arising out of the troubled state of the public feeling as 
to politics. 

In the spring of 1794 I find him writing to his friends in 
Roxburghshire with great exultation about the " good spirit " 
manifesting itself among the upper classes of the citizens of 
Edinburgh, and above all, the organisation of a regiment of 
volunteers, in which his brother Thomas was enrolled as a 
grenadier, while, as he remarks, his own '-unfortunate infirm- 
ity" condemned him to be "a mere spectator of the drills." 
In the course of the same year, the plan of a corps of volun- 
teer light horse was started; and if the recollection of Mr. 
Skene be accurate, the suggestion originally proceeded from 
Scott himself, who certainly had a principal share in its subse- 
quent success. He writes to his uncle at Rosebank, requesting 
him to be on the look-out for a " strong gelding, such as would 
suit a stalwart dragoon ; " and intimating his intention to 
part with his collection of Scottish coins, rather than not be 
mounted to his mind. The corps, however, was not organised 
for some time ; and in the meanwhile he had an opportunity 
of displaying his zeal in a manner which Captain Scott by no 
means considered as so respectable. 

A party of Irish medical students began, towards the end 
of April, to make themselves remarkable in the Edinburgh 
Theatre, where they mustered in a particular corner of the pit, 
and lost no opportunity of insulting the Loyalists of the boxes, 
by calling for revolutionary tunes, applauding every speech 
that could bear a seditious meaning, and drowning the national 



EXCURSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 65 

anthem in howls and hootings. The young Tories of the Parlia- 
ment House resented this licence warmly, and after a succes- 
sion of minor disturbances, the quarrel was put to the issue 
of a regular trial by combat. Scott was conspicuous among 
the juvenile advocates and solicitors who on this grand night 
assembled in front of the pit, armed with stout cudgels, and 
determined to have God save the King not only played without 
interruption, but sung in full chorus by both company and 
audience. The Irishmen were ready at the first note of the 
anthem. They rose, clapped on their hats, and brandished 
their shillelahs ; a stern battle ensued, and after many a head 
had been cracked, the lawyers at length found themselves in 
possession of the field. In writing to Simprim a few days 
afterwards, Scott says — " You will be glad to hear that the 
affair of Saturday passed over without any worse consequence 
to the Loyalists than that five, including your friend and 
humble servant Colonel Grogg, 1 have been bound over to the 
peace, and obliged to give bail for their good behaviour, which, 
you may believe, was easily found. The said Colonel had no 
less than three broken heads laid to his charge by as many of 
the Democrats." Sir Alexander Wood says — "Walter was 
certainly our Coryphaeus, and signalised himself splendidly in 
this desperate fray." After this exhibition of zeal, it will not 
perhaps surprise the reader of Scott's letters, to find him return- 
ing to Edinburgh from a remote ramble in the Highlands dur- 
ing the next autumn, on purpose to witness the execution of 
Watt, who had been tried and condemned for his share in a 
plot for seizing the Castle, and proclaiming a provisional repub- 
lican government. He expresses great contempt for the un- 
happy man's pusillanimous behaviour in his last scene ; and 
soon after, on occasion of another formidable riot, he appears 
as active among the special constables sworn in by the 
magistracy. 

His rambles continued to give his father considerable vexa- 
tion. Some sentences in a letter to his aunt, Miss Christian 
Rutherford, may be worth quoting for certain allusions to this 
and other domestic matters. Mr. Scott, though on particular 
occasions he could permit himself, like Saunders Fairford, to 
play the part of a good Amphytrion, was habitually ascetic in 
his habits. I have heard his son tell, that it was common with 
him, if any one observed that the soup was good, to taste it 

1 This was Scott's nickname in a boyish club : derived, it is said, from 
a remarkable pair of Grograin breeches — but another etymon might have 
its claim. 



66 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

again, and say, — " Yes, it is too good, bairns," and dash a tum- 
bler of cold water into his plate. It is easy, therefore, to 
imagine with what rigidity he must have enforced the ultra- 
Catholic severities which marked, in those days, the yearly or 
half-yearly retreat of the descendants of John Knox. "Walter 
writes : — "I want the assistance of your eloquence to con- 
vince my honoured father that nature did not mean me either 
for a vagaboud or travelling merchant, when she honoured me 
with the wandering propensity lately so conspicuously dis- 
played. I saw Dr. R. yesterday, who is well. I did not 
choose to intrude upon the little lady, this being sermon week ; 
for the same reason we are looking very religious and very 
sour at home. However, it is with some folk selon les regies, 
that in proportion as they are pure themselves, they are en- 
titled to render uncomfortable those whom they consider as 
less perfect." 

If his father had some reason to complain of want of ardour 
as to the weightier matters of the law, it probably gave him 
little consolation to hear, in June 1795, of his appointment to be 
one of the curators of the Advocates' Library, an office always 
reserved for those members of the Faculty who have the repu- 
tation of superior zeal in literary affairs. He had for col- 
leagues David Hume, the Professor of Scots Law, and Malcolm 
Laing, the historian ; and his discharge of his functions must 
have given satisfaction, for I find him further nominated, in 
March 1796, together with Mr. Eobert Cay, — an accomplished 
gentleman, afterwards Judge of the Admiralty Court in Scot- 
land — to "'put the Faculty's cabinet of medals in proper 
arrangement." From the first assumption of the gown, he 
had been accustomed to spend many of his hours in the low 
gloomy vaults under the Parliament House, which then formed 
the only receptacle for their literary and antiquarian collec- 
tions. This habit, it may be supposed, grew by what it fed 
on. MSS. can only be consulted within the library, and his 
Highland and border raids were constantly suggesting inquiries 
as to ancient local history and legends, which could nowhere 
else have been pursued with equal advantage. He became an 
adept in the deciphering of old deeds ; and whoever examines 
the rich treasure of the MacFarlan MSS., and others service- 
able for the illustration of Scotch topography and genealogy, 
will, I am told, soon become familiar with the marks of his 
early pencil. His reputation for skill in such researches 
reached George Chalmers, the celebrated antiquary, then 
engaged in the preparation of his Caledonia. They met at 



EXCURSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS. 67 

Jedburgh, and a correspondence ensued which proved very use- 
ful to the veteran author. The border ballads, as they were 
gradually collected, and numberless quotations from MSS. in 
illustration of them, were eagerly placed at his disposal. 

It must, I think, have been while he was indulging his vaga- 
bond vein, during the autumn of 1795, that Mrs. Barbauld paid 
her visit to Edinburgh, and entertained a party at Mr. Dugald 
Stewart's, by reading William Taylor's then unpublished ver- 
sion of Burger's Lenore. In the essay on Imitation of Popu- 
lar Poetry, the reader has a full account of the interest with 
which Scott heard, some weeks afterwards, a friend's imper- 
fect recollections of this performance ; the anxiety with which 
he sought after a copy of the original German; the delight 
with which he at length perused it ; and how, having just been 
reading the specimens of ballad poetry introduced into Lewis' 
Bomance of the Monk, he called to mind the early facility of 
versification which had lain so long in abeyance, and ventured 
to promise his friend a rhymed translation of Lenore from his 
own pen. The friend in question was Miss Cranstoun, after- 
wards Countess of Purgstall, the sister of George Cranstoun 
(Lord Corehouse). He began the task, he tells us, after sup- 
per, and did not retire to bed until he had finished it, having 
by that time worked himself into a state of excitement which 
set sleep at defiance. 

Next morning, before breakfast, he carried his MS. to Miss 
Cranstoun, who was not only delighted but astonished at it ; 
for .1 have seen a letter of hers to a friend in the country, 
in which she says — " Upon my word, Walter Scott is going 
to turn out a poet — something of a cross I think between 
Burns and Gray." The same day he read it also to Sir Alex- 
ander Wood, who retains a vivid recollection of the high 
strain of enthusiasm into which he had been exalted by dwell- 
ing on the wild unearthly imagery of the German bard. " He 
read it over to me," says Sir Alexander, " in a very slow and 
solemn tone, and after we had said a few words about its 
merits, continued to look at the fire silent and musing for 
some minutes, until he at length burst out with ' I wish to 
Heaven I could get a skull and two crossbones.'" Wood said, 
that if Scott would accompany him to the house of John Bell, 
the celebrated surgeon, he had no doubt this wish might be 
easily gratified. 1 They went thither accordingly on the in- 

1 Sir A. Wood was himself the son of a distinguished surgeon in Edin- 
burgh. He married one of the daughters of Sir W. Forbes of Pitsligo — 
rose in the diplomatic service — and "died in 1846. 



68 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

stant; — Mr. Bell smiled on hearing the object of their visit, 
and pointing to a closet, at the corner of his library, bade 
Walter enter and choose. From a well-fnrnished museum of 
mortality, he selected forthwith what seemed to him the hand- 
somest skull and pair of crossbones it contained, and wrapping 
them in his handkerchief, carried the formidable bundle home 
to George's Square. The trophies were immediately mounted 
on the top of his little bookcase ; and when Wood visited him, 
after many years of absence from this country, he found them 
in possession of a similar position in his dressing-room at 
Abbotsford. 

All this occurred in the beginning of April 1796. A few 
days afterwards Scott went to pay a visit at a country house, 
where he expected to meet the "lady of his love." Jane 
Anne Cranstoun was in the secret of his attachment, and 
knew, that however doubtful might be Miss Stuart's feeling 
on that subject, she had a high admiration of Scott's abilities, 
and often corresponded with him on literary matters ; so, after 
he had left Edinburgh, it occurred to her that she might per- 
haps forward his views in this quarter, by presenting him in 
the character of a printed author. William Erskine being 
called in to her councils, a few copies of the ballad were 
forthwith thrown off in the most elegant style, and one, richly 
bound and blazoned, followed Scott in the course of a few days 
to the country. The verses were read and approved of, and 
Miss Cranstoun at least flattered herself that he had not made 
his first appearance in types to no purpose. 1 

In autumn he saw again his favourite haunts in Perthshire 
and Forfarshire, — among others, the residence of Miss Stuart ; 
and that his reception was not adequate to his expectations, 
may be gathered from some expressions in a letter addressed 
to him when at Montrose by his confidante, Miss Cranstoun : 
— "Dear Scott," — (she says) — "I bless the gods for conduct- 
ing your poor dear soul safely to Perth. When I consider 
the wilds, the forests, the lakes, the rocks — and the spirits 
in which you must have whispered to their startled echoes, it 
amazeth me how you escaped. Had you but dismissed your 
little squire and Earwig [a pony], and spent a few days as 
Orlando would have done, all posterity might have profited 
by it ; but to trot quietly away, without so much as one stanza 
to Despair — never talk to me of love again — never, never, 
never ! I am dying for your collection of exploits. When 

1 This story was told by the Countess of Purgstall on her death-bed to 
Captain Basil Hall. See his S'chloss Ilainfeld, p. 333. 



DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE. 69 

will you return? In the meantime. Heaven speed you! Be 
sober, and hope to the end." 

The affair in which Miss Cranstoun took so lively an in- 
terest was now approaching its end. It was known, before 
autumn closed, that the lady of his vows had finally promised 
her hand to his amiable rival ; and, when the fact was an- 
nounced, some of those who knew Scott the best, appear to 
have entertained very serious apprehensions as to the effect 
which the disappointment might have upon his feelings. For 
example, one of those brothers of The Mountain wrote as fol- 
lows to another of them, on the 12th October 1796 : — " Mr. 
Forbes marries Miss Stuart. This is not good news. I always 
dreaded there was some self-deception on the part of our 
romantic friend, and I now shudder at the violence of his 
most irritable and ungovernable mind. Who is it that says, 
'Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for 
love ' ? I hope sincerely it may be verified on this occasion." 

Scott had, however, in all likelihood, digested his agony 
during the solitary ride in the Highlands to which Miss 
Cranstoun's last letter alludes. 

I venture to recall here to the reader's memory the opening 
of the twelfth chapter of Peveril of the Peak, written twenty- 
six years after this youthful disappointment : — " The period 
at which love is formed for the first time, and felt most 
strongly, is seldom that at which there is much prospect of 
its being brought to a happy issue. The state of artificial 
society opposes many complicated obstructions to early mar- 
riages ; and the chance is very great that such obstacles prove 
insurmountable. In fine, there are few men who do not look 
back in secret to some period of their youth, at which a sin- 
cere and early affection was repulsed, or betrayed, or became 
abortive from opposing circumstances. It is these little pas- 
sages of secret history which leave a tinge of romance in 
every bosom, scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or 
the most advanced period of life, to listen with total indiffer- 
ence to a tale of true love." 

Rebelling, as usual, against circumstances, Scott seems to 
have turned with renewed ardour to his literary pursuits ; and 
in that same October 1796, he was "prevailed on," as he play- 
fully expresses it, " by the request of friends, to indulge his 
own vanity, by publishing the translation of Lenore, with that 
of the Wild Huntsman, also from Burger, in a thin quarto." 
The little volume, which has no author's name on the title- 
page, was printed for Manners and Miller of Edinburgh. He 



70 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

had owed his copy of Burger to a young gentlewoman of high 
German blood, who in 1795 became the wife of his friend and 
chief Hugh Scott of Harden. She was daughter of Count 
Brllhl of Martkirchen, long Saxon ambassador at the Court 
of St. James's, by his wife Alineria, Countess-Dowager of 
Egremont. The young kinsman was introduced to her soon 
after her arrival at Mertoun, and his attachment to German 
studies excited her attention and interest. The ballad of the 
Wild Huntsman appears to have been executed during the 
month that preceded his first publication ; and he was thence- 
forth engaged in a succession of versions from the dramas of 
Meier and Inland, several of which are still extant in his MS., 
marked 1796 and 1797. These are ail in prose like their 
originals ; but he also versified at the same time some lyrical 
fragments of Goethe, as, for example, the Morlachian Ballad, 
" What yonder glimmers so white on the mountain ? " and the 
song from Claudina von Villa Bella. He consulted his friend 
at Mertoun on all these essays ; and I have often heard him 
say, that among those many " obligations of a distant date 
which remained impressed on his memory, after a life spent 
in a constant interchange of friendship and kindness," he 
counted not as the least the lady's frankness in correcting 
his Scotticisms, and more especially his Scottish rhymes. 

His obligations to this lady were indeed various ; but I 
doubt, after all, whether these were the most important. He 
used to say, that she was the first woman of real fashion that 
took him up ; that she used the privileges of her sex and sta- 
tion in the truest spirit of kindness ; set him right as to a 
thousand little trifles, which no one else would have ventured 
to notice ; and, in short, did for him what no one but an ele- 
gant woman can do for a young man, whose early days have 
been spent in narrow and provincial circles. " When I first 
saw Sir Walter," she writes to me, " he was about four or five 
and twenty, but looked much younger. He seemed bashful and 
awkward ; but there were from the first such gleams of supe- 
rior sense and spirit in his conversation, that I was hardly 
surprised when, after our acquaintance had ripened a little, 
I felt myself to be talking with a man of genius. He was 
most modest about himself, and shewed his little pieces appar- 
ently without any consciousness that they could possess any 
claim on particular attention. Nothing so easy and good- 
humoured as the way in which he received any hints I might 
offer, when he seemed to be tampering with the King's English. 
I remember particularly how he laughed at himself, when I 



PUBLICATION OF BALLADS. 71 

made him take notice that 'the little two dogs/ in some of 
his lines, did not please an English ear accustomed to k the 
two little dogs.' " 

Nor was this the only person at Mertoun who took a lively 
interest in his pursuits. Harden entered into all the feelings 
of his beautiful bride on this subject ; and his mother, the 
Lady Diana Scott, daughter of the last Earl of Marchmont, 
did so no less. She had conversed, in her early days, with the 
brightest ornaments of the cycle of Queen Anne, and preserved 
rich stores of anecdote, well calculated to gratify the curiosity 
and excite the ambition of a young enthusiast in literature. 
Lady Diana soon appreciated the minstrel of the clan; and, 
surviving to a remarkable age, she had the satisfaction of see- 
ing him at the height of his eminence — the solitary person 
who could give the author of Marmion personal reminiscences 
of Pope. 

With these friends, as well as in his Edinburgh circle, the 
little anonymous volume found warm favour ; Dugald Stewart, 
Ramsay of Ochtertyre, and George Chalmers, especially prophe- 
sied for it great success. The many inaccuracies and awkward- 
ness of rhyme and diction to which Scott alludes in republishing 
its two ballads towards the close of his life, did not prevent 
real lovers of poetry from seeing that no one but a poet could 
have transfused the daring imagery of the German in a style 
so free, bold, masculine, and full of life ; but, wearied as all 
such readers had been with that succession of flimsy, lacka- 
daisical trash which followed the appearance of the Eeliques 
by Bishop Percy, the opening of such a new vein of popular 
poetry as these verses revealed, would have been enough to 
produce lenient critics for inferior translations. Many, as we 
have seen, sent forth copies of the Lenore about the same time ; 
and some of these might be thought better than Scott's in 
particular passages ; but, on the whole, it seems to have been 
felt and acknowledged by those best entitled to judge, that he 
deserved the palm. Meantime, we must not forget that Scot- 
land had lost that very year the great poet Burns, — her glory 
and her shame. It is at least to be hoped that a general senti- 
ment of self-reproach, as well as of sorrow, had been excited 
by the premature extinction of such a light ; and, at all events, 
it is agreeable to know that they who had watched his career 
with the most affectionate concern, were among the first to 
hail the promise of a more fortunate successor. 

The anticipations of these gentlemen, that Scott's versions 
would attract general attention in the south, were not fulfilled. 



72 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

He himself attributes this to the contemporaneous appearance 
of so many other translations from Lenore. "I was coldly 
received," he says, "by strangers, but my reputation began 
rather to increase among my own friends ; and on the whole 
I was more bent to shew the world that it had neglected some- 
thing worth notice than to be affronted by its indifference ; 
or rather, to speak candidly, I found pleasure in the literary 
labours in which I had almost by accident become engaged, 
and laboured less in the hope of pleasing others, though cer- 
tainly without despair of doing so, than in pursuit of a new 
and agreeable amusement to myself." 

In his German studies, Scott acquired, about this time, 
another assistant in Mr. Skene of Kubislaw — a gentleman 
considerably his junior, who had just returned to Scotland 
from a residence of several years in Saxony. Their fondness 
for the same literature, with Scott's eagerness to profit by 
his new acquaintance's superior attainment in it, opened an 
intercourse which general similarity of tastes, and I venture 
to add, in many of the most important features of character, 
soon ripened into the familiarity of a tender friendship — "An 
intimacy," Mr. Skene says, in a paper before me, " of which 
I shall ever think with so much pride — a friendship so pure 
and cordial as to have been able to withstand all the vicissi- 
tudes of nearly forty years, without ever having sustained 
even a casual chill from unkind thought or word." Mr. Skene 
adds — " During the whole progress of his varied life, to that 
eminent station which he could not but feel he at length held 
in the estimation, not of his countrymen alone, but of the 
whole v r orld, I never could perceive the slightest shade of 
variance from that simplicity of character with which he 
impressed me on the first hour of our meeting." 

Among the common tastes which served to knit these friends 
together, w T as their love of horsemanship, in which, as in all 
other manly exercises, Skene highly excelled ; and the fears of 
a French invasion becoming every day more serious, their 
thoughts were turned with corresponding zeal to the project of 
mounted volunteers. "The London Light-horse had set the 
example," says Mr. Skene; "but in truth it was to Scott's 
ardour that this force in the North owed its origin. Unable, 
by reason of his lameness, to serve amongst his friends on 
foot, he had nothing for it but to rouse the spirit of the moss- 
trooper, with which he readily inspired all who possessed the 
means of substituting the sabre for the musket." On the 14th 
February 1797, these friends and many more met and drew up 



LIGHT-HORSE VOLUNTEERS. 73 

an offer to serve as a body of volunteer cavalry in Scotland ; 
which was accepted by Government. The organisation of the 
corps proceeded rapidly ; they extended their offer to serve in 
any part of the island in case of invasion ; and this also being 
accepted, the whole arrangement was shortly completed ; when 
Charles Maitland of Rankeillor was elected Major-Comman- 
dant ; William Pae of St. Catharine's, Captain ; William Forbes 
of Pitsligo, and James Skene of Bubislaw, Cornets; Walter 
Scott, Paymaster, Quartermaster, and Secretary. But the 
treble duties thus devolved on Scott were found to interfere 
too severely with his other avocations, and Colin Mackenzie 
of Portmore relieved him from those of paymaster. 

" The part of quartermaster," says Mr. Skene, "was purposely 
selected for him, that he might be spared the rough usage of 
the ranks ; but, notwithstanding his infirmity, he had a remark- 
ably firm seat on horseback, and in all situations a fearless 
one : no fatigue ever seemed too much for him, and his zeal and 
animation served to sustain the enthusiasm of the whole corps, 
while his ready ' mot a rire ' kept up, in all, a degree of good- 
humour and relish for the service, without which, the toil and 
privations of long daily drills would not easily have been sub- 
mitted to by such a body of gentlemen. At every interval of 
exercise, the order, sit at ease, was the signal for the quarter- 
master to lead the squadron to merriment ; every eye was 
intuitively turned on ' Earl Walter,' as he was familiarly called 
by his associates of that date, and his ready joke seldom failed 
to raise the ready laugh. He took his full share in all the 
labours and duties of the corps, had the highest pride in its 
progress and proficiency, and was such a trooper himself, as 
only a very powerful frame of body and the warmest zeal in 
the cause could have enabled any one to be. But his habitual 
good-humour was the great charm, and at the daily mess (for 
we all dined together when in quarters) that reigned supreme." 
Earl Walter's first charger, by the way, was a tall and power- 
ful animal, named Lenore. These daily drills appear to have 
been persisted in during the spring and summer of 1797 ; the 
corps spending moreover some weeks in quarters at Mussel- 
burgh. The majority of the troop having professional duties 
to attend to, the ordinary hour for drill was five in the morn- 
ing ; and when we reflect, that after some hours of hard work 
in this way, Scott had to produce himself regularly in the 
Parliament House with gown and wig, for the space of four 
or five hours at least, while his chamber practice, though still 
humble, was on the increase — and that he had found a plenti- 



74 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

ful source of new social engagements in his troop connexions 
— it certainly could have excited no surprise had his literary 
studies been found suffering total intermission during this busy 
period. That such was not the case, however, his correspond- 
ence and note-books afford ample evidence. His fee-book shews 
that he made by his first year's practice L.24, 3s. ; by the 
second, L.57, 15s. ; by the third, L.84, 4s. ; by the fourth, L.90. ; 
and in his fifth year at the Bar — that is, from November 1796 
to July 1797 — L.144, 10s. ; of which L.50 were fees from his 
father's chamber. He had no turn, at this time of his life, for 
early rising; so that the regular attendance at the morning 
drills was of itself a strong evidence of his military zeal ; but 
he must have, in spite of them, and of all other circumstances, 
persisted in what was the usual custom of all his earlier life, 
namely, the devotion of the best hours of the night to solitary 
study. In general, both as a young man, and in more advanced 
age, his constitution required a good allowance of sleep, and 
he, on principle, indulged in it, saying, " he was but half a man 
if he had not full seven hours of utter unconsciousness ; " but 
his whole mind and temperament were, at this period, in a 
state of most fervent exaltation, and spirit triumphed over 
matter. 



CHAPTEE III. 

Toiir to the English Lakes — Miss Carpenter — Marriage — Lasswacle 
Cottage — Original Ballads — Monk Lewis — Goetz of Berlichingen — 
John Leyden — James Hogg — James Ballantyne — Sheriffship of Sel- 
kirk—Publication of the Minstrelsy of the Border. 1797-1803. 

After the rising of the Court of Session in July 1797, Scott 
set cut on a tour to the English lakes, accompanied by his 
brother John and Adam Eergusson. Their first stage was 
Halyards in Tweeddale, then inhabited by his friend's father, 
the philosopher and historian ; and they stayed there for a day 
or two, in the course of which he had his first and only inter- 
view with David Bitchie, the original of his Black Dwarf. 
Proceeding southwards, the tourists visited Carlisle, Penrith, 
— the vale of the Eamont, including Mayburgh and Brougham 
Castle, — Ulswater and Windermere ; and at length fixed their 
headquarters at the then peaceful and sequestered little water- 
ing place of Gilsland, making excursions from thence to the 
various scenes of romantic interest which are commemorated 
in The Bridal of Triermain, and otherwise leading very much 
the sort of life depicted among the loungers of St. Eonan's 
Well. Scott was, on his first arrival at Gilsland, not a little 
engaged with the beauty of one of the young ladies lodged 
under the same roof with him ; and it was on occasion of a 
visit in her company to some part of the Eoman Wall that he 
indited his lines — 

" Take these flowers which, purple waving, 
On the ruin'd rampart grew," &c. 

But this was only a passing glimpse of flirtation. A week or 
so afterwards commenced a more serious affair. 

Eiding one day with Fergusson, they met, some miles from 
their quarters, a young lady taking the air on horseback, whom 
neither of them had previously remarked, and whose appear- 
ance instantly struck both so much, that they kept her in view 
until they had satisfied themselves that she also was one of the 
party at Gilsland, The same evening there was a ball, at 

75 



76 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

which. Captain Scott produced himself in his regimentals, and 
Fergusson also thought proper to be equipped in the uniform 
of the Edinburgh Volunteers. There was no little rivalry 
among the young travellers as to who should first get presented 
to the unknown beauty of the morning's ride ; but though both 
the gentlemen in scarlet had the advantage of being dancing 
partners, their friend succeeded in handing the fair stranger to 
supper — and such was his first introduction to Charlotte Mar- 
garet Carpenter. 

Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in 
personal attractions ; " a form that was fashioned as light as a 
fay's ; " a complexion of the clearest and lightest olive ; eyes 
large, deep-set and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown ; and 
a profusion of silken tresses, black as the raven's wing ; her 
address hovering between the reserve of a pretty young English- 
woman who has not mingled largely in general society, and a 
certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well with the 
accompaniment of a French accent. A lovelier vision, as all 
who remember her in the bloom of her days have assured me, 
could hardly have been imagined ; and from that hour the fate 
of the young poet was fixed. 

She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a de- 
voted royalist, who held an office under Government, and 
Charlotte Yolere, his wife. She and her only brother, Charles 
Charpentier, had been educated in the Protestant religion of 
their mother, and when their father died, which occurred in 
the beginning of the Evolution, Madame Charpentier made 
her escape with her children first to Paris, and then to England, 
where they found a warm friend and protector in Arthur, the 
second Marquis of Downshire, who had, in the course of his 
travels in France, formed an intimate acquaintance with the 
family, and, indeed, spent some time under their roof. M. 
Charpentier had, in his first alarm as to the coming Revolution, 
invested L.4000 in English securities — part in a mortgage upon 
Lord Downshire's estates. On the mother's death, which oc- 
curred soon after her arrival in London, this nobleman took 
on himself the character of sole guardian to her children ; and 
Charles Charpentier received in due time, through his interest, 
an appointment in the service of the East India Company, in 
which he had by this time risen to the lucrative situation of 
commercial resident at Salem. His sister was now making a 
little excursion, under the care of the lady who had superin- 
tended her education, Miss Jane Nicholson, a daughter of Dr. 
Nicholson, Dean of Exeter, and grand-daughter of William 



MISS CARPENTER. 77 

Nicholson, Bishop of Carlisle, well known as the editor of 
" The English Historical Library." To some connexions which 
the learned prelate's family had ever since his time kept up in 
the diocese of Carlisle, Miss Carpenter owed the direction of 
her summer tour. 

Scott's father was now in a very feeble state of health, which 
accounts for his first announcement of this affair being made 
in a letter to his mother ; it is undated ; — but by this time the 
young lady had left Gilsland for Carlisle, where she remained 
until her destiny was settled. He says : — " My dear Mother, — 
I should very ill deserve the care and affection with Avhich you 
have ever regarded me, were I to neglect my duty so far as to 
omit consulting my father and you in the most important step 
which I can possibly take in life, and upon the success of 
which my future happiness must depend. It is with pleasure 
I think that I can avail myself of your advice and instructions 
in an affair of so great importance as that which I have at 
present on my hands. You will probably guess from this 
preamble, that I am engaged in a matrimonial plan, which is 
really the case. Though my acquaintance with the young lady 
has not been of long standing, this circumstance is in some 
degree counterbalanced by the intimacy in which we have 
lived, and by the opportunities which that intimacy has af- 
forded me of remarking her conduct and sentiments on many 
different occasions, some of which were rather of a delicate 
nature, so that in fact I have seen more of her during the few 
weeks we have been together, than 1 could have done after a 
much longer acquaintance, shackled by the common forms of 
ordinary life. You will not expect from me a description of 
her person — for which I refer you to my brother, as also for a 
fuller account of all the circumstances attending the business 
than can be comprised in the Gompass of a letter. Without 
flying into raptures, for I must assure you that my judgment as 
well as my affections are consulted upon this occasion — without 
flying into raptures, then, I may safely assure you, that her 
temper is sweet and cheerful, her understanding good, and, 
what I know will give you pleasure, her principles of religion 
very serious. I have been very explicit with her upon the 
nature of my expectations, and she thinks she can accommodate 
herself to the situation which I should wish her to hold in 
society as my wife, which, you will easily comprehend, I mean 
should neither be extravagant nor degrading. Her fortune, 
though partly dependent upon her brother, who is high in 
cftice at Madras, is very considerable — at present L.500 a-year. 



78 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

This, however, we must, in some degree, regard as precarious 
— I mean to the full extent ; and indeed, when you know her, 
you will not be surprised that I regard this circumstance chiefly 
because it removes those prudential considerations which would 
otherwise render our union impossible for the present. Betwixt 
her income and my own professional exertions, I have little 
doubt we will be enabled to hold the rank in society which my 
family and situation entitle me to fill. Write to me very fully 
upon this important subject — send me your opinion, your 
advice, and, above all, your blessing." 

Scott remained in Cumberland until the Jedburgh assizes 
recalled him to his legal duties. On arriving in that town, he 
immediately sent for his friend Shortreed, whose Memorandum 
records that the evening of the 30th September 1797 was one 
of the most joyous he ever spent. " Scott," he says, "was sair 
beside himself about Miss Carpenter; — we toasted her twenty 
times over — and sat together, he raving about her, until it 
was one in the morning." He soon returned to Cumberland ; 
and remained there until various difficulties presented by the 
prudence and prejudices of family connexions had been over- 
come. It appears that at one stage of the business he had 
seriously contemplated leaving the bar of Edinburgh, and 
establishing himself with his bride (I know not in what 
capacity) in one of the colonies. He attended the Court of 
Session as usual in November ; and was married at Carlisle 
during the Christmas recess. I extract the following entries 
from the fly-leaf of his black-letter Bible : — 

" Secundum morem majorum hcec de familid Gualteri Scott, 
Jurisconsulti Edinensis, in librum hunc sacrum manu sud con- 
script a sunt. 

" Gualterus Scott, filius Gualteri Scott et Annce Rutherford, 
natus erat apud Edinam 15rao die Augusti a.d. 1771. 

" Socius Facultatis Juridical Edinensis receptus erat llmo die 
Jidii, a.d. 1792. 

"In ecclesiam Sanctce Marioc apud Carlisle, uxorem duxit 
Margaretam Charlottam Carpenter, filiam quondam Joan m is 
Charpentier et Charlottoc Volere, Lugdunensem 24fo die Decem- 
bris 1797." * 

1 The account in the text of Miss Carpenter's origin has been, I am 
aware, both spoken and written of as an uncandid one : it had been 
expected that even in 1837 I would not pass in silence a rumour of early 
prevalence, which represented her and her brother as children of Lord 
Downshire by Madame Charpentier. I did not think it necessary to 
allude to this story while any of Sir Walter's own children were living ; 
and I presume it will be sufficient for me to say now, that neither I, nor, 



MARRIAGE. 79 

Scott carried his bride to a lodging in George Street, Edin- 
burgh ; a house which he had taken, not being quite prepared 
for her reception. The first fortnight was, I believe, sufficient 
to convince her husband's family that, however rashly he had 
formed the connexion, she had the sterling qualities of a wife. 
Notwithstanding some little leaning to the pomps and vanities 
of the world, she had made up her mind to find her happiness 
in better things ; and so long as their circumstances continued 
narrow, no woman could have conformed herself to them with 
more of good feeling and good sense. I cannot fancy that her 
manners or ideas could ever have amalgamated very well with 
those of her husband's parents ; but the feeble state of the old 
gentleman's health prevented her from seeing them constantly ; 
and without any affectation of strict intimacy, they soon were, 
and always continued to be, very good friends. Anne Scott, 
the delicate sister to whom the Ashestiel Memoir alludes so 
tenderly, speedily formed a warm and sincere attachment for 
the stranger ; but death, in a short time, carried off that inter- 
esting creature, who seems to have had much of her brother's 
imaginative and romantic temperament, without his power of 
controlling it. 

Mrs. Scott's arrival was welcomed with unmingled delight 
by the brothers of TJie Mountain. The two ladies who had 
formerly given life and grace to their society, were both 
recently married. Scott's house in South Castle Street (soon 
after exchanged for one of the same sort in North Castle Street, 
which he purchased, and inhabited down to 1826) became now 
what Cranstoun's and Erskine's had been while their accom- 
plished sisters, remained with them. The officers of the Light 
Horse, too, established a club among themselves, supping once 
a week at each other's houses in rotation. The lady thus found 
two somewhat different, but both highly agreeable circles ready 
to receive her with cordial kindness ; and the evening hours 
passed in a round of innocent gaiety, all the arrangements 
being conducted in a simple and inexpensive fashion, suitable 

I firmly believe, any one of them, ever heard either from Sir Walter, or 
from his wife, or from Miss Nicholson (who survived them both) the 
slightest hint as to the rumour in question. There is not an expression in 
the preserved correspondence between Scott, the young lady, and the 
Marquis, that gives it a shadow of countenance. Lastly, Lady Scott 
always kept hanging by her bedside, and repeatedly kissed in her dying 
moments, a miniature of her father which is now in my hands ; and it is 
the well painted likeness of a handsome gentleman — but I am assured 
the features have no resemblance to Lord Downshire or any of the Hill 
family. 



80 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

to young people whose days were mostly laborious, and very 
few of their purses heavy. Scott and Erskine had always been 
fond of the theatre; the pretty bride was passionately so — 
and I doubt if they ever spent a week in Edinburgh without 
indulging themselves in this amusement. But regular dinners 
and crowded assemblies were in those years quite unthought of. 
Perhaps nowhere else could have been found a society on so 
small a scale including more of vigorous intellect, varied infor- 
mation, elegant tastes, and real virtue, affection, and mutual 
confidence. How often have I heard its members, in the midst 
of the wealth and honours which most of them in due season 
attained, sigh over the recollection of those humbler days, when 
love and ambition were young and buoyant — and no difference 
of opinion was able to bring even a momentary chill over the 
warmth of friendship. 

In the summer of 1798 Scott hired a cottage at Lasswade, on 
the Esk, about six miles from Edinburgh. It is a small house, 
but with one room of good dimensions, which Mrs. Scott's 
taste set off to advantage at very humble cost — a paddock or 
two — and a garden (commanding a most beautiful view) in 
which Scott delighted to train his flowers and creepers. Never, 
I have heard him say, was he prouder of his handiwork than 
when he had completed the fashioning of a rustic archway, 
now overgrown with hoary ivy, by way of ornament to the 
entrance from the Edinburgh road. In this retreat they spent 
some happy summers, receiving the visits of their few chosen 
friends from the neighbouring city, and wandering at will 
amidst some of the most romantic scenery that Scotland can 
boast — Scott's dearest haunt in the days of his boyish ram- 
blings. They had neighbours, too, who were not slow to culti- 
vate their acquaintance. With the Clerks of Pennycuick, with 
Mackenzie the Man of Peeling, who then occupied the charm- 
ing villa of Auchendinny, and with Lord Woodhouselee, Scott 
had from an earlier date been familiar ; and it was while at 
Lasswade that he formed intimacies, even more important in 
their results, with the noble families of Melville and Buc- 
cleuch, both of whom have castles in the same valley. 

" Sweet are the paths, passing sweet, 
By Esk's fair streams that run, 
O'er airy steep, thro' copsewood deep 
Impervious to the sun ; 

" From that fair dome where suit is paid 
By blast of bugle free, 
To Auchendinny 's hazel shade, 
And haunted Woodhouselee. 




LADY SCOTT. 



LASS WADE COTTAGE. 81 

" Who knows not Melville's beechy grove, 
And Roslin's rocky glen ; 
Dalkeith, which all the virtues love, 
And classic Hawthornden ?" 

Another verse reminds ns that 

"There the rapt poet's step may rove ; " — 

and it was amidst these delicions solitudes that he did produce 
the pieces which laid the imperishable foundations of all his 
fame. It was here, that when his warm heart was beating 
with young and happy love, and his whole mind and spirit 
were nerved by new motives for exertion — it was here, that in 
the ripened glow of manhood he seems to have first felt some- 
thing of his real strength, and poured himself out in those 
splendid original ballads which were at once to fix his name. 

I must, however, approach these more leisurely. When 
William Erskine was in London in the spring of this year, he 
happened to meet in society with Matthew Gregory Lewis, 
M.P. for Hindon, whose romance of The Monk, with the bal- 
lads which it included, had made for him, in those barren days, 
a brilliant reputation. This good-natured fopling, the pet and 
plaything of certain fashionable circles, was then busy with 
that miscellany which at length came out in 1801, under the 
name of Tales of Wonder, and was beating up in all quarters 
for contributions. Erskine shewed Lewis the versions of Le- 
nore and the AVild Huntsman; and when he mentioned that his 
friend had other specimens of the German diablerie in his port- 
folio, the collector anxiously requested that Scott might be en- 
listed in his cause ; — and he, who was perhaps at all times 
rather disposed to hold popular favour as the surest test of lit- 
erary merit, and who certainly continued through life to over- 
estimate all talents except his own, considered this invitation 
as a very flattering compliment. He immediately wrote to 
Lewis, placing whatever pieces he had translated and imitated 
from the German Volkslieder at his disposal. 

In the autumn Lewis made a tour into the north ; and Scott 
told Allan Cunningham, thirty years afterwards, that he 
thought he had never felt such elation as when the " Monk " 
invited him to dine with him for the first time at his hotel. 
Since he gazed on Burns in his seventeenth year, he had seen 
no one enjoying, by general consent, the fame of a poet ; and 
Lewis, whatever Scott might, on maturer consideration, think 
of his title to such fame, had certainly done him no small ser- 
vice ; for the ballads of Alonzo the Brave, &c, had rekindled 



82 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

effectually in his breast the spark of poetical ambition. Lady 
Charlotte Campbell (now Bury), always distinguished by her 
passion for letters, was ready. " in pride of rank, in beauty's 
bloom," to do the honours of Scotland to the Lion of Mayfair ; 
and I believe Scott's first introduction to Lewis took place at one 
of her Ladyship's parties. But they met frequently, and, among 
other places, at Dalkeith — as witness one of Scott's marginal 
notes, written in 1825, on Lord Byron's Diary : — " Lewis was 
fonder of great people than he ought to have been, either as a man 
of talent or as a man of fashion. He had always dukes and duch- 
esses in his mouth, and was pathetically fond of any one that 
had a title. You would have sworn he had been a parvenu of 
yesterday, yet he had lived all his life in good society. His 
person was extremely small and boyish — he was indeed the 
least man I ever saw, to be strictly well and neatly made. I 
remember a picture of him by Saunders being handed round at 
Dalkieth House. The artist had ingeniously flung a dark fold- 
ing-mantle around the form, under which was half-hid a dagger, 
a dark lantern, or some such cut-throat appurtenance ; with all 
this the features were preserved and ennobled. It passed from 
hand to hand into that of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, 
hearing the general voice affirm that it was very like, said 
aloud, ' Like Mat Lewis ! Why that picture's like a Man ! ' 
He looked, and lo, Mat Lewis's head was at his elbow." 

Lewis spent a day or two with Scott at Musselburgh, where 
the yeomanry corps were in quarters. Scott received him in 
his lodgings, under the roof of an ancient dame, who afforded 
him much amusement by her daily colloquies with the fish- 
women — the Mucklebackets of the place. His delight in study- 
ing the dialect of these people is well remembered by the sur- 
vivors of the cavalry, and must have astonished the stranger 
dandy. While walking about before dinner on one of these 
days, Mr. Skene's recitation of the German Kriegslied, "Der 
Abschied's Tag ist da" (the day of departure is come), de- 
lighted both Lewis and the Quarter-Master ; and the latter pro- 
duced next morning that spirited little piece in the same meas- 
ure, which, embodying the volunteer ardour of the time, was 
forthwith adopted as the troop-song of the Edinburgh Light- 
Horse. 

In January 1799, Mr. Lewis appears negotiating with a 
bookseller, named Bell, for the publication of Scott's version of 
Goethe's Tragedy, "Goetz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand." 
Bell seems finally to have purchased the copyright for twenty- 
five guineas, and twenty-five more to be paid in case of a sec- 



GOETZ OF BEBLICHINGEN , 83 

ond edition — which was never called for until long after the 
copyright had expired. Lewis writes, " I have made him dis- 
tinctly understand, that, if you accept so small a sum, it will 
be only because this is your first publication : " — the tiny ad- 
venture in 1796 had been completely forgotten. The Goetz 
appeared accordingly, with Scott's name on the title-page, in 
the following February. 

In March 1799, he carried his wife to London, this being the 
first time that he had seen the metropolis since the days of his 
infancy. The acquaintance of Lewis served to introduce him 
to some literary and fashionable society, with which he was 
much amused ; but his great anxiety was to examine the an- 
tiquities of the Tower and Westminster Abbey, and to make 
some researches among the MSS. of the British Museum. He 
found his Goetz spoken of favourably, on the whole, by the 
critics of the time j but it does not appear to have attracted 
general attention. The truth is, that, to have given Goethe 
anything like a fair chance with the English public, his first 
drama ought to have been translated at least ten years before. 
The imitators had been more fortunate than the master, and 
this work, which constitutes one of the landmarks in the his- 
tory of German literature, had not come even into Scott's 
hands, until he had familiarised himself with the ideas which 
it first opened, in the puny mimicries of writers already for- 
gotten. He readily discovered the vast gulf which separated 
Goethe from the German dramatists on whom he had hereto- 
fore been employing himself ; but the public in general drew 
no such distinctions, and the English Goetz was soon after- 
wards condemned to oblivion, through the unsparing ridicule 
showered on whatever bore the name of German play, by the 
inimitable caricature of The Rovers. 

The tragedy of Goethe, however, has in truth nothing in 
common with the wild absurdities against which Canning and 
Ellis levelled the arrows of their wit. It is a broad, bold, free, 
and most picturesque delineation of real characters, manners, 
and events ; the first fruits, in a word, of that passionate ad- 
miration for Shakspeare, to which all that is excellent in the 
recent imaginative literature of Germany must be traced. 
With what delight must Scott have found the scope and man- 
ner of our Elizabethan drama revived on a foreign stage at the 
call of a real master ! — with what double delight must he have 
seen Goethe seizing for the noblest purposes of art, men and 
modes of life, scenes, incidents, and transactions, all claiming 
near kindred with those that had from boyhood formed the chosen 



84 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

theme of his own sympathy and reflexion ! In the baronial 
robbers of the Rhine, stern, bloody, and rapacious, but frank, 
generous, and, after their fashion, courteous — in their forays 
upon each other's domains, the besieged castles, the plundered 
herds, the captive knights, the browbeaten bishop, and the 
baffled liege-lord, who vainly strove to quell all these turbu- 
lences — Scott had before him a vivid image of the life of his 
own and the rival Border clans, familiarised to him by a hun- 
dred nameless minstrels. If it be doubtful whether, but for 
Percy's Reliques, he would ever have thought of editing their 
Ballads, I think it not less so, whether, but for the Ironhanded 
Goetz, it would ever have flashed upon his mind, that in the wild 
traditions which these recorded, he had been unconsciously 
assembling materials for more works of high art than the long- 
est life could serve him to elaborate. 

He executed about the same time his "House of Aspen," 
rather a rifacimento than a translation from one of the minor 
dramatists that had crowded to partake the popularity of 
Goetz. It also was sent to Lewis in London, where, having 
been read and commended by the celebrated actress, Mrs. 
Esten, it was taken up by Kemble, and I believe actually put 
in rehearsal for the stage. If so, the trial did not encourage 
further preparation, and the notion was abandoned. Discover- 
ing the play thirty years after among his papers, Scott sent it 
to the Keepsake of 1829. In the advertisement he says, " He 
had lately chanced to look over these scenes with feelings very 
different from those of the adventurous period of his literary 
life during which they were written, and yet with such, per- 
haps, as a reformed libertine might regard the illegitimate pro- 
duction of an early amour." He adds, "there is something to 
be ashamed of, certainly ; but, after all, paternal vanity whis- 
pers that the child has some resemblance to the father." The 
scenes are interspersed with some lyrics, the numbers of which, 
at least, are worthy of attention. One has the metre — and 
not a little of the spirit — of the boat-song of Clan-Alpin : — 

"Joy to the victors, the sons of old Aspen, 
Joy to the race of the battle and scar ! " &c. &c. 

His return to Edinburgh was accelerated by the tidings of 
his father's death. This worthy man had had a succession of 
paralytic attacks, under which, mind as well as body had by 
degrees been laid quite prostrate. When the first Chronicles 
of the Canongate appeared, a near relation of the family said 
to me — "I had been out of Scotland for some time, and did 



MONK LEWIS. 85 

not know of my good friend's illness until I reached Edin- 
burgh, a few months before his death. Walter carried me to 
visit him, and warned me that I should see a great change. I 
saw the very scene that is here painted of the elder Croft- 
angry's sickroom — not a feature different — poor Anne Scott, 
the gentlest of creatures, was treated by the fretful patient 
precisely like this niece." I have lived to see the curtain rise 
and fall once more on a like scene. 

Mr. Thomas Scott continued to manage his father's business. 
He married early ; 1 he was in his circle of society extremely 
popular ; and his prospects seemed fair in all things. The 
property left by the old gentleman was less than had been ex- 
pected, but sufficient to make ample provision for his widow, 
and a not inconsiderable addition to the resources of those 
among whom the remainder was divided. 

Scott's mother and sister, both much exhausted with their 
attendance on a protracted sickbed, and the latter already in 
the first stage of the malady which in two years more carried 
her also to her grave, spent the greater part of the following 
summer and autumn in his cottage at Lasswade. There he 
was now again labouring assiduously in the service of Lewis's 
" hobgoblin repast ; " and in an essay of 1830, he gives us suffi- 
cient specimens of the Monk's Editorial Letters to his contrib- 
utor — the lectures of a " martinet in rhymes and numbers — 
severe enough, but useful eventually, as forcing on a young 
and careless versifier criticisms absolutely necessary to his 
future success." As to his imperfect rhymes of this period, I 
have no doubt he owed them to his recent zeal about collecting 
the ballads of the Border. He had, in his familiarity with 
compositions so remarkable for merits of a higher order, ceased 
to be offended, as in the days of his devotion to Langhorne 
and Mickle he would probably have been, with their loose and 
vague assonances, which are often, in fact, not rhymes at all ; 
a licence pardonable enough in real minstrelsy, meant to be 
chanted to moss-troopers with the accompanying tones of the 
war-pipe, but certainly not worthy of imitation in verses writ- 
ten for the eye of a polished age. Of this carelessness as to 
rhyme, we see little or nothing in our few specimens of his 
boyish verse, and it does not occur, to any extent that has ever 
been thought worth notice, in his great works. 

1 Mrs. Thomas Scott, born Miss Macculloch of Ardwell, was one of the 
best, and wisest, and most agreeable women I have ever known. She 
had a motherly affection for all Sir Walter's family — and she survived 
them all. She died at Canterbury in April 1848, aged 72. 



86 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

But Lewis's collection did not engross the leisure of this 
summer. It produced also what Scott justly calls his "first 
serious attempts in verse ; " and of these, the earliest appears 
to have been the Glenfinlas. Here the scene is laid in the most 
favourite district of his favourite Perthshire Highlands ; and 
the Gaelic tradition on which it is founded was far more likely 
to draw out the secret strength of his genius, as well as to 
arrest the feelings of his countrymen, than any subject with 
which the stores of German diablerie could have supplied him. 
It has been alleged, however, that the poet makes a German 
use of his Scottish materials ; that the legend, as briefly told 
in the simple prose of his preface, is more affecting than the 
lofty and sonorous stanzas themselves ; that the vague terror 
of the original dream loses, instead of gaining, by the expanded 
elaboration of the detail. There may be something in these 
objections : but no man can pretend to be an impartial critic 
of the piece which first awoke his own childish ear to the power 
of poetry and the melody of verse. 

The next of these compositions was, I believe, the Eve of 
St. John, in which Scott re-peoples the tower of Smailholm, 
the awe-inspiring haunt of his infancy ; and here he touches, 
for the first time, the one superstition which can still be ap- 
pealed to with full and perfect effect; the only one which 
lingers in minds long since weaned from all sympathy with 
the machinery of witches and goblins. And surely this mys- 
tery was never touched with more thrilling skill than in that 
noble ballad. It is the first of his original pieces, too, in which 
he uses the measure of his own favourite Minstrels ; a measure 
which the monotony of mediocrity had long and successfully 
been labouring to degrade, but in itself adequate to the expres- 
sion of the highest thoughts, as well as the gentlest emotions ; 
and capable, in fit hands, of as rich a variety of music as any 
other of modern times. This was written at Mertoun-house in 
the autumn of 1799. Some dilapidations had taken place in 
the tower of Smailholm, and Harden, being informed of the 
fact, and entreated with needless earnestness by his kinsman 
to arrest the hand of the spoiler, requested playfully a ballad, 
of which Smailholm should be the scene, as the price of his 
assent. 

Then came The Grey Brother, founded on another supersti- 
tion, which seems to have been almost as ancient as the belief 
in ghosts ; namely, that the holiest service of the altar cannot 
go on in the presence of an unclean person — a heinous sinner 
unconfessed and unabsolved. The fragmentary form of this 



MONK LEWIS. 87 

poem greatly heightens the awfulness of its impression ; and 
in construction and metre, the verses which really belong to 
the story appear to me the happiest that have ever been pro- 
duced expressly in imitation of the ballad of the middle age. 
In the stanzas, previously quoted, on the scenery of the Esk, 
however beautiful in themselves, and however interesting now 
as marking the locality of the composition, he must be allowed 
to have lapsed into another strain, and produced a pannus pur- 
pureas which interferes with and mars the general texture. 

He wrote at the same period the fine chivalrous ballad en- 
titled The Fire-King, in which there is more than enough to 
make us forgive the machinery. 

It was in the course of this autumn that he first visited Both- 
well Castle, the seat of Archibald Lord Douglas, who had mar- 
ried Lady Frances Scott, sister to Henry Duke of Buccleuch ; 
a woman whose many amiable virtues were combined with 
extraordinary strength of mind, and who had, from the first 
introduction of the young poet at Dalkeith, formed high antici- 
pations of his future career. Lady Douglas was one of his 
dearest friends through life ; and now, under her roof, he im- 
proved an acquaintance (begun also at Dalkeith) with one whose 
abilities and accomplishments not less qualified her to estimate 
him, and who still survives to lament the only event that could 
have interrupted their cordial confidence — Lady Louisa Stuart, 
daughter of the celebrated John Earl of Bute. These ladies, 
who were sisters in mind, feeling, and affection, he visited 
among scenes the noblest and most interesting that all Scotland 
can shew — alike famous in history and romance; and he was 
not unwilling to make Bothwell and Blantyre the subject of 
another ballad ; of which, however, only a first and imperfect 
draft has been recovered. 

One morning, during his visit to Bothwell, was spent on an 
excursion to the ruins of Craignethan Castle, the seat, in former 
days, of the great Evandale branch of the house of Hamilton, 
but now the property of Lord Douglas ; and the poet expressed 
such rapture with the scenery, that his hosts urged him to ac- 
cept, for his lifetime, the use of a small habitable house, 
enclosed within the circuit of the ancient walls. This offer was 
not at once declined ; but circumstances occurred before the 
end of the year which rendered it impossible for him to estab- 
lish his summer residence in Lanarkshire. The castle of Craig- 
nethan is the original of his " Tillietudlem." 

His note-book of this year has supplied the recent editions of 
his poetry with several other ballads in an incomplete state : 



88 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

but notwithstanding all these varied essays, and the charms 
of the distinguished society into which his reputation had 
already introduced him, his friends do not appear to have as yet 
entertained the slightest notion that literature was to be the 
main business of his life. A letter of one very early corre- 
spondent, Mr. Kerr of Abbotrule, congratulates him on his hav- 
ing had more to do at the autumnal assizes of Jedburgh this 
year than on any former occasion, which intelligence he seems 
himself to have communicated with no feeble expressions of 
satisfaction. "I greatly enjoy this," says Kerr. "Go on; and 
with your strong sense and hourly ripening knowledge, that 
you must rise to the top of the tree in the Parliament House in 
due season, I hold as certain as that Murray died Lord Mans- 
field. But don't let many an Ovid, 1 or rather many a Burns 
(which is better), be lost in you. I rather think men of busi- 
ness have produced as good poetry in their by-hours as the 
professed regulars ; and I don't see any sufficient reason why 
Lord President Scott should not be a famous poet (in the vaca- 
tion time), when we have seen a President Montesquieu step so 
nobly beyond the trammels in the Esprit des Loix. I suspect 
Dry den would have been a happier man had he had your pro- 
fession. The reasoning talents visible in his verses, assure me 
that he would have ruled in Westminster Hall as easily as he 
did at Button's, and he might have found time enough besides 
for everything that one really honours his memory for." This 
friend appears to have entertained, in October 1799, the very 
opinion as to the profession of literature on which Scott acted 
through life. 

Having again given a week to Liddesdale, in company with 
Mr. Shortreed, he spent a few days at Rosebank, and was pre- 
paring to return to Edinburgh for the winter, when he received 
a visit which had consequences of importance. 

In the early days of Launcelot Whale, he had had for a 
classfellow Mr. James Ballantyne, the eldest son of a decent 
shopkeeper in Kelso, and their acquaintance had never been 
altogether broken off, as Scott's visits to Rosebank were fre- 
quent, and the other had resided for a time in Edinburgh, when 
pursuing his education with a view to the profession of a solici- 
tor. Mr. Ballantyne had not been successful in his attempts 
to establish himself in that branch of the law, and was now the 
printer and editor of a weekly newspaper in his native town. 
He called at Rosebank one morning, and requested his old 

1 How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast ; 
How many Martials were in Pult'ney lost. — Dunciad, iv. 170. 



JAMES BALLANTFNE. 89 

acquaintance to supply a few paragraphs on some legal question 
of the day for his Kelso Mail. Scott complied ; and carrying 
his article himself to the printing-office, took with him also 
some of his recent pieces, designed to appear in Lewis's Collec- 
tion. With these, especially, as his Memorandum says, the 
" Morlachian fragment after Goethe," Ballantyne was charmed, 
and he expressed his regret that Lewis's book was so long in 
appearing. Scott talked of Lewis with rapture ; and, after re- 
citing some of his stanzas, said — "I ought to apologise to you 
for having troubled you with anything of my own when I had 
things like this for your ear." — "I felt at once," says Ballan- 
tyne, " that his own verses were far above what Lewis could 
ever do, and though, when I said this, he dissented, yet he 
seemed pleased with the warmth of my approbation." At 
parting, Scott threw out a casual observation, that he wondered 
his old friend did not try to get some little booksellers' work, 
" to keep his types in play during the rest of the week." Bal- 
lantyne answered, that such an idea had not before occurred to 
him — that he had no acquaintance with the Edinburgh 
" trade ; " but, if he had, his types were good, and he thought 
he could afford to work more cheaply than town-printers. 
Scott, " with his good-humoured smile," said, — " You had bet- 
ter try what you can do. You have been praising my little 
ballads ; suppose you print off a dozen copies or so of as many 
as will make a pamphlet, sufficient to let my Edinburgh ac- 
quaintances judge of your skill for themselves." Ballantyne 
assented ; and I believe exactly twelve copies of William and 
Ellen, The Fire-King, The Chase, and a few more of those 
pieces, were thrown off accordingly, with the title (alluding to 
the long delay of Lewis's Collection) of " Apology for Tales of 
Terror — 1799." This first specimen of a press, afterwards so 
celebrated, pleased Scott ; and he said to Ballantyne — "I have 
been for years collecting old Border ballads, and I think I could, 
with little trouble, put together such a selection from them as 
might make a neat little volume, to sell for four or five shil- 
lings. I will talk to some of the booksellers about it when I 
get to Edinburgh, and if the thing goes on, you shall be the 
printer." Ballantyne highly relished the proposal; and the 
result of this little experiment changed wholly the course of 
his worldly fortunes, as well as of his friend's. 

Mr. Ballantyne, after recounting this conversation, says : — 
"I do not believe that even at this time he seriously contem- 
plated giving himself much to literature ; " but I think a letter 
addressed to Ballantyne, in the following April, affords con- 



90 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

siderable reason to doubt the accuracy of this impression. 
Scott there states, that he and another acquaintance of the 
printer's had been consulting together as to the feasibility of 
" no less than a total plan of migration from Kelso to Edin- 
burgh ; " and proceeds to say, that, in his opinion, there was 
then a very favourable opening in Edinburgh for a new printing 
establishment, conducted by a man of talent and education. 
He mentions — besides the chance of a share in the printing of 
law-papers — firstly, a weekly newspaper of the higher class ; 
secondly, a monthly magazine ; and thirdly, an annual register, 
as undertakings all likely to be well received ; suggests that 
the general publishing trade itself was in a very languid con- 
dition ; and ends with a hint that " pecuniary assistance, if 
wanted, might (no doubt) be procured on terms of a share, or 
otherwise." The coincidence of most of these air-drawn 
schemes with things afterwards realised, is certainly very 
striking. At the same time, between October 1799 and April 
1800, there had occurred a change in Scott's personal affairs 
very likely to have strengthened, if not originated the design, 
which Ballantyne did not believe him to have seriously enter- 
tained at the time of their autumnal interview. 

Shortly after the commencement of the Winter Session, the 
office of Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant by the 
death of an early ally of Scott's, Andrew Plummer of Middle- 
stead, a scholar and antiquary, who had entered with zeal into 
his ballad researches, and whose name occurs accordingly more 
than once in the notes to the Border Minstrelsy. Perhaps the 
community of their tastes may have had some part in suggest- 
ing to the Duke of Buccleuch, that Scott might fitly succeed 
Mr. Plummer in the magistrature. Be that as it might, his 
Grace's influence was used with Mr. Henry Dundas (after- 
wards Viscount Melville) who in those days had the general 
control of the Crown patronage in Scotland, and was prepared 
to look favourably on Scott's pretensions to some office of this 
description. Though neither the Duke nor this able Minister 
were at all addicted to literature, they had both seen him fre- 
quently under their own roofs, and been pleased with his man- 
ners and conversation ; and he had by this time come to be on 
terms of affectionate intimacy with some of the younger mem- 
bers of either family. The Earl of Dalkeith (afterwards Duke 
Charles of Buccleuch), and his brother Lord Montagu, both 
participating with kindred ardour in the military patriotism 
of the period, had been thrown into his society under circum- 
stances well qualified to ripen acquaintance into confidence. 



SHERIFFSHIP OF SELKIRK. 91 

Robert Dundas, eldest son of the Minister, had been one of 
Scott's companions in the High School ; and he, too, had been 
of late a lively partaker in the business of the yeomanry cav- 
alry ; and, last not least, Scott always remembered with grati- 
tude the strong intercession on this occasion of Lord Melville's 
nephews, Robert Dundas of Arniston, the Lord Advocate of 
the time, and William Dundas, then Secretary to the Board 
of Control. 

His appointment to the Sheriffship bears date 16th Decem- 
ber 1799. It secured him an annual salary of L.300 ; an ad- 
dition to his resources which at once relieved his mind from 
whatever degree of anxiety he might have felt in considering 
the prospect of an increasing family, along with the ever pre- 
carious chances of a profession, in the daily drudgery of which 
it is impossible to suppose that he ever could have found much 
pleasure. The duties of the office were far from heavy ; the 
territory, small, peaceful, and pastoral, was in great part the 
property of the Duke of Buccleuch; and he turned with re- 
doubled zeal to his project of editing the ballads, many of the 
best of which belonged to this very district of his favourite 
Border — those " tales " which, as the Dedication of the Min- 
strelsy expresses it, had " in elder times celebrated the prowess 
and cheered the halls " of his noble patron's ancestors. 

Scott found able assistants in the completion of his design. 
Richard Heber (long Member of Parliament for the University 
of Oxford) happened to spend this winter in Edinburgh, and 
was welcomed, as his talents and accomplishments entitled 
him to be, by the cultivated society of the place. With Scott, 
his multifarious learning, particularly his profound knowledge 
of the literary monuments of the middle ages, soon drew him 
into habits of close alliance; the stores of his library, even 
then extensive, were freely laid open, and his own oral com- 
mentaries were not less valuable. But through him Scott 
made acquaintance with a person still more qualified to give 
effectual aid in this undertaking. Pew who read these pages 
can be unacquainted with the leading facts in the history of 
John Leyden. Pew can need to be reminded that this ex- 
traordinary man, born in a shepherd's cottage in one of the 
wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, and of course almost en- 
tirely self-educated, had, before he attained his ninteenth 
year, confounded the doctors of Edinburgh by the portentous 
mass of his acquisitions in almost every department of learn- 
ing. He had set the extremest penury at utter defiance, or 
rather he had never been conscious that it could operate as a 



92 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

bar; for bread and water, and access to books and lectures, 
comprised all within the bounds of his wishes ; and thus he 
toiled and battled at the gates of science after science, until 
his unconquerable perseverance carried everything before it ; 
and yet with this monastic abstemiousness and iron hardness 
of will, perplexing those about him by manners and habits 
in which it was hard to say whether the moss-trooper or the 
schoolman of former days most prevailed, he was at heart a 
poet. 

Archibald Constable, in after life one of the most eminent 
of British publishers, v/as at this period the keeper of a small 
book-shop, into which few but the poor students of Leyden's 
order had hitherto found their way. Heber, in the course of 
his bibliomanical prowlings, discovered that it contained some 
of 

" The small old volumes, dark with tarnished gold," 

which were already the Delilahs of his imagination; and, more- 
over, that the young bookseller had himself a strong taste for 
such charmers. Frequenting the place, accordingly, he ob- 
served with some curiosity the countenance and gestures of 
another daily visitant, who came not to purchase, evidently, 
but to pore over the more recondite articles — often balanced 
for hours on a ladder with a folio in his hand like Dominie 
Sampson. The English virtuoso was on the look-out for any 
books or MSS. that might be of use to the editor of the pro- 
jected " Minstrelsy," and some casual colloquy led to the 
discovery that this new stranger was, amidst the endless laby- 
rinth of his lore, a master of legend and tradition — an enthu- 
siastic collector and skilful expounder of these very Border 
ballads. Scott heard with much interest Heber s account of 
his odd acquaintance, and found, when introduced, the person 
whose initials, affixed to a series of pieces in verse, chiefly 
translations from Greek, Latin, and the northern languages, 
scattered, during the last three or four years, over the pages 
of the '-Edinburgh Magazine," had often much excited his 
curiosity, as various indications pointed out the Scotch Bor- 
der to be the native district of this unknown "J. L." 

These new friendships led to a great change in Leyden's 
position, purposes, and prospects. He was presently received 
into the best society of Edinburgh, where his uncouthness of 
demeanour does not seem to have at all interfered with the 
general appreciation of his genius, his endowments, and ami- 
able virtues. Fixing his ambition on the East, where he hoped 



JOHN LEYBEN. 93 

to rival the achievements of Sir William Jones, he at length, 
about the beginning of 1802, obtained the promise of some 
literary appointment in the East India Company's service; 
but when the time drew near, it was discovered that the pat- 
ronage of the season had been exhausted, with the exception 
of one surgeon-assistant's commission — which had been with 
difficulty secured for him by Mr. William Dundas ; who, more- 
over, was obliged to inform him, that if he accepted it, he must 
be qualified to pass his medical trials within six months. This 
news, which would have crushed any other man's hopes to the 
dust, was only a welcome fillip to the ardour of Leyden. He 
that same hour grappled with a new science in full confidence 
that whatever ordinary men could do in three or four years, 
his energy could accomplish in as many months ; took his de- 
gree accordingly in the beginning of 1803, having just before 
published his beautiful poem, The Scenes of Infancy; sailed 
to India ; raised for himself, within seven short years, the rep- 
utation of the most marvellous of Orientalists ; and died, in 
the midst of the proudest hopes, at the same age with Burns 
and Byron, in 1811. 

But to return : — Leyden was enlisted by Scott in the ser- 
vice of Lewis, and immediately contributed a ballad, called 
The Elf-King, to the Tales of Terror. Those highly-spirited 
pieces, the Gout of Keeldar, Lord Soulis, and The Mermaid, 
were furnished for the original department of Scott's own col- 
lection : and the Dissertation on Fairies, prefixed to its second 
volume, "although arranged and digested by the editor, abounds 
with instances of such curious reading as Leyden only had 
read, and was originally compiled by him ; " but not the least 
of his labours was in the collection of the old ballads them- 
selves. When he first conversed with Ballantyne on the subject 
of the proposed work, and the printer signified his belief that 
a single volume of moderate size would be sufficient for the 
materials, Leyden exclaimed — " Dash it, does Mr. Scott mean 
another thin thing like Goetz of Burlichingen ? I have more 
than that in my head myself : we shall turn out three or four 
such volumes at least." He went to work stoutly in the real- 
isation of these wider views. " In this labour," says Scott, 
"he was equally interested by friendship for the editor, and 
by his own patriotic zeal for the honour of the Scottish borders ; 
and both may be judged of from the following circumstance. 
An interesting fragment had been obtained of an ancient his- 
torical ballad; but the remainder, to the great disturbance of 
the editor and his coadjutor, was not to be recovered. Two 



94 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

days afterwards, while the editor was sitting with some com- 
pany after dinner, a sonnd was heard at a distance like that of 
the whistling of a tempest through the torn rigging of the 
vessel whic\ scuds before it. The sounds increased as they 
approached more near ; and Ley den (to the great astonishment 
of such of the guests as did not know him) burst into the room, 
chanting the desiderated ballad with the most enthusiastic gest- 
ure, and all the energy of what he used to call the saw-tones 
of his voice. It turned out that he had walked between forty 
and fifty miles and back again, for the sole purpose of visit- 
ing an old person who possessed this precious remnant of 
antiquity." 1 

During the years 1800 and 1801, the Minstrelsy formed its 
editor's chief occupation — a labour of love truly, if ever such 
there was ; but neither this nor his sheriffship interfered with 
his regular attendance at the Bar, the abandonment of which 
was all this while as far as it ever had been from his imagina- 
tion, or that of any of his friends. He continued to have his 
summer headquarters at Lasswade ; and Sir John Stoddart, who 
visited him there in the course of his Scottish tour (published 
in 1801), dwells on " the simple unostentatious elegance of the 
cottage, and the domestic picture which he there contemplated 
— a man of native kindness and cultivated talent, passing the 
intervals of a learned profession amidst scenes highly favour- 
able to his poetic inspirations, not in churlish and rustic soli- 
tude, but in the daily exercise of the most precious sympathies 
as a husband, a father, and a friend." His means of hospital- 
ity were now much enlarged, and the cottage on a Saturday 
and Sunday at least, was seldom without visitors. 

Among other indications of greater ease in his circumstances, 
which I find in his letter-book, he writes to Heber, after his 
return to London in May 1800, to request his good offices on 
behalf of Mrs. Scott, who had " set her heart on a phaeton, at 
once strong, and low, and handsome, and not to cost more than 
thirty guineas ; " which combination of advantages Heber seems 

1 Essay on the Life of Leyden — Miscellaneous Prose. Many tributes 
to his memory are scattered over his friend's works, both prose and verse ; 
and, above all, Scott did not forget him when exploring, three years after 
his death, the scenery of The Lord of the Isles : — 

" Scenes sung by him who sings no more : 
His bright and brief career is o'er, 

And mute his tuneful strains ; 
Quench'd is his lamp of varied lore, 
That loved the light of song to pour ; 
A distant and a deadly shore 

Has Leyden's cold remains ! " 



JAMES HOGG. 95 

to have found by no means easy of attainment. The phaeton 
was, however, discovered ; and its springs must soon have been 
put to a sufficient trial, for this was " the first wheeled carriage 
that ever penetrated into Liddesdale " — namely, in August 1800. 
The friendship of the Buccleuch family now placed better means 
of research at his disposal, and Lord Dalkeith had taken spe- 
cial care that there should be a band of pioneers in waiting 
when he reached Hermitage. 

Though he had not given up Lasswade, his sheriffship now 
made it necessary for him that he should be frequently in 
Ettrick Forest. On such occasions he took up his lodgings 
in the little inn at Clovenford, a favourite fishing station on 
the road from Edinburgh to Selkirk. From this place he could 
ride to the county town whenever business required his pres- 
ence, and he was also within a few miles of the vales of Yar- 
row and Ettrick, where he obtained large accessions to his store 
of ballads. It was in one of these excursions that, penetrat- 
ing beyond St. Mary's lake, he found a hospitable reception at 
the farm of Blackhoase, situated on the Douglas-burn, then ten- 
anted by a remarkable family, to which I have already made 
allusion — that of William Laidlaw. He was then a very 
young man, but the extent of his acquirements was already 
as noticeable as the vigour and originality of his mind ; and 
their correspondence where " Sir " passes, at a few bounds, 
through "Dear Sir," and "Dear Mr. Laidlaw," to "Dear Willie," 
shews how speedily this new acquaintance had warmed into a 
very tender affection. Laidlaw's zeal about the ballads was 
repaid by Scott's anxious endeavours to get him removed from 
a sphere for which, he writes, " it is no flattery to say that you 
are much too good." It was then, and always continued to 
be, his opinion, that his friend was particularly qualified for 
entering with advantage on the study of the medical profes- 
sion ; but such designs, if Laidlaw himself ever took them up 
seriously, were not ultimately persevered in; and I question 
whether any worldly success could, after all, have overbalanced 
the retrospect of an honorable life spent happily in the open 
air of nature, amidst scenes the most captivating to the eye of 
genius, and in the intimate confidence of, perhaps, the great- 
est of contemporary minds. 

James Hogg spent ten years of his life in the service of 
Mr. Laidlaw's father, but he had passed into that of another 
sheep-farmer in a neighbouring valley, before Scott first visited 
Blackhouse. William Laidlaw and Hogg were, however, most 
intimate friends, and the former took care that Scott should 



96 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

see, without delay, one whose fondness for the minstrelsy of 
the Forest was equal to his own, and whose aged mother was 
celebrated for having by heart several ballads in a more per- 
fect form than any other inhabitant of the vale of ' Ettrick. 
The personal history of James Hogg must have interested 
Scott even more than any acquisition of that sort which he 
owed to this acquaintance with, perhaps, the most remarkable 
man that ever wore the maud of a shepherd. Under the garb, 
aspect, and bearing of a rude peasant — and rude enough he 
was in most of these things, even after no inconsiderable experi- 
ence of society — Scott found a brother poet, a true son of nat- 
ure and genius, hardly conscious of his powers. He had taught 
himself to write by copying the letters of a printed book as 
he lay watching his flock on the hill-side, and had probably 
reached the utmost pitch of his ambition, when he first found 
that his artless rhymes could touch the heart of the ewe-milker 
who partook the shelter of his mantle during the passing storm. 
As yet his naturally kind and simple character had not been 
exposed to any of the dangerous flatteries of the world ; his 
heart was pure, his enthusiasm buoyant as that of a happy 
child; and well as Scott knew that reflection, sagacity, wit, 
and wisdom, were scattered abundantly among the humblest 
rangers of these pastoral solitudes, there was here a depth and 
a brightness that filled him with wonder, combined with a quaint- 
ness of humour, and a thousand little touches of absurdity, 
which afforded him more entertainment, as I have often heard 
him say, than the best comedy that ever set the pit in a roar. 

Scott opened in the same year a correspondence with the 
venerable Bishop of Dromore, who seems, however, to have 
done little more than express a warm interest in an undertak- 
ing so nearly resembling that which will ever keep his own 
name in remembrance. He had more success in his applica- 
tions to a more unpromising quarter — namely, with Joseph 
Ritson, the ancient and virulent assailant of Bishop Percy's 
editorial character. This narrow-minded, sour, and dogmatical 
little word-catcher had hated the very name of a Scotsman, 
and was utterly incapable of sympathising with any of the 
higher views of his new correspondent. Yet the bland cour- 
tesy of Scott disarmed even this half -crazy pedant; and he 
communicated the stores of his really valuable learning in a 
manner that seems to have greatly surprised all who had 
hitherto held any intercourse with him on antiquarian topics. 
It astonished, above all, the amiable and elegant George Ellis, 
whose acquaintance was about the same time opened to Scott 



BORDER MINSTRELSY. 97 

through their common friend Heber. Mr. Ellis was now busily 
engaged in collecting the materials for his charming works, en- 
titled Specimens of Ancient English Poetry, and Specimens of 
Ancient English Romance. The correspondence between him 
and Scott soon came to be constant. They met personally, 
before many letters had been exchanged, conceived for each 
other a cordial respect and affection, and continued on a foot- 
ing of almost brotherly intimacy ever after. To this alliance, 
Scott owed, among other advantages, his early and ready ad- 
mission to the acquaintance and familiarity of Ellis's bosom 
friend, his coadjutor in the Anti-jacobin, and the confidant of 
all his literary schemes, Mr. Canning. 

Scott spent the Christmas of 1801 at Hamilton Palace, in 
Lanarkshire. To Lady Anne Hamilton he had been intro- 
duced by her friend, Lady Charlotte Campbell, and both the 
late and present Dukes of Hamilton appear to have partaken 
of Lady Anne's admiration for G-lenfmlas and the Eve of St. 
John. A morning's ramble to the majestic ruins of the old 
baronial castle on the precipitous banks of the Evan, and among 
the adjoining remains of the primeval Caledonian forest, sug- 
gested to him a ballad, not inferior in execution to any he had 
hitherto produced, and especially interesting as the first in 
which he grapples with the world of picturesque incident un- 
folded in the authentic annals of Scotland. With the magnifi- 
cent localities before him he skilfully interwove the daring 
assassination of the Eegent Murray by one of the clansmen of 
"the princely Hamilton." Had the subject been taken up in 
after years, we might have had another Marmion or Heart of 
Mid-Lothian; for in Caclyow Castle we have the materials and 
outline of more than one of the noblest of ballads. 

About two years before this piece began to be handed about 
in Edinburgh, Thomas Campbell had made his appearance there, 
and at once seized a high place in the literary world by his 
" Pleasures of Hope." Among the most eager to welcome him 
had been Scott; and I find the brother-bard thus expressing 
himself concerning the MS. of Cadyow : — " The verses of Cad- 
yow Castle are perpetually ringing in my imagination — 

Where, mightiest of the beasts of chase 

That roam in woody Caledon, 
Crashing the forest in his race, 

The mountain bull comes thundering on — 

and the arrival of Hamilton, when 

Reeking from the recent deed, 
He dashed his carbine on the ground. 



98 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

I have repeated these lines so often on the North Bridge, that 
the whole fraternity of coachmen know rne by tongne as I 
pass. To be sure, to a mind in sober, serious street-walking 
humour, it must bear an appearance of lunacy when one 
stamps with the hurried pace and fervent shake of the head, 
which strong, pithy poetry excites." 

According to the original intention, the Sir Tristrem, an 
imperfect romance, ascribed to Thomas of Ercildoune, the 
famous old seer and bard of the Border, was to have had a 
prominent place in the first Uvraison of the Minstrelsy ; but 
from the rapid accumulation of matter for notes, as well as of 
unprinted ballads, this plan was dropped. The Cadyow Castle, 
too, was ready, but " two volumes," as Ballantyne says, " were 
already full to overflowing ; " so it also was reserved for a third. 

Volumes I. and II. appeared in January 1802, from the re- 
spectable house of Caclell and Davies in the Strand; and, 
owing to the cold reception of Lewis's Tales of Wonder, which 
had come forth a year earlier, these may be said to have first 
introduced Scott as an original writer to the English public. 
In his Beruarks on the imitation of Popular Poetry, he says : — 
" When the book came out, the imprint, Kelso, was read with 
wonder by amateurs of typography, who had never heard of 
such a place, and were astonished at the example of handsome 
printing which so obscure a town had produced." One of the 
embellishments was a view of Hermitage Castle, the history of 
which is rather curious. Scott executed a rough sketch of it 
during the last of his " Liddesdale raids " with Shortreed, 
standing for that purpose for an hour or more up to his middle 
in the snow. Nothing can be ruder than the performance ; 
but his friend William Clerk made a better drawing from it ; 
and from his, a third and further improved copy was done 
by Hugh Williams, the elegant artist, afterwards known as 
" Greek Williams." 1 Scott used to say, the oddest thing of 
all was, that the engraving, founded on the labours of three 
draughtsmen, one of whom could not draw a straight line, and 
the two others had never seen the place meant to be repre- 
sented, was nevertheless pronounced by the natives of Liddes- 
dale to give a very fair notion of the ruins of Hermitage. The 
edition was exhausted in the course of the year, and the terms' 
of publication having been that Scott should have half the 
clear profits, his share was exactly L.78, 10s. — a sum which 
certainly could not have repaid him for the actual expenditure 
incurred in the collection of his materials. 

1 His Travels in Greece were published in 1820. 



BORDER MINSTRELSY. 99 

The work was received with very great delight by Ellis ; 
and I might fill many pages by transcribing applausive letters 
from others of acknowledged discernment in this branch of 
literature. John Duke of Boxburgh is among the number, and 
he conveys also a complimentary message from Lord Spencer ; 
Pinkerton issues his decree of approbation as ex cathedrd; 
Chalmers overflows with heartier praise ; and even Joseph 
Bitson extols his presentation copy as "the mcrst valuable 
literary treasure in his possession." There follows enough of 
female admiration to have been dangerous for another man ; a 
score of fine ladies contend who shall be the most extravagant 
in encomium — and as many professed blue-stockings come 
after; among, or rather above the rest, Anna Seward, "the 
Swan of Lichfield," who laments that her " bright luminary," 
Darwin, does not survive to partake her raptures ; — observes, 
that " in the Border Ballads the first strong rays of the Delphic 
orb illuminate Jellon Graeme ; " and concludes with a fact in- 
disputable, but strangely expressed, viz. that "the Lady Anne 
Bothwell's Lament, Cowdenknowes, &c. &c, climatically pre- 
ceded the treasures of Burns, and the consummate Glenfinlas 
and Eve of St. John." 

The reception of the first volumes elated naturally their 
printer, whom George Ellis dubs " the Buhner of Kelso." He 
also went up to London to cultivate acquaintance with pub- 
lishers, and on his return writes thus to his employer : — "I 
shall ever think the printing the Scottish Minstrelsy one of 
the most fortunate circumstances of my life. I have gained, 
not lost by it, in a pecuniary light; and the prospects it has 
been the means of opening to me, may advantageously influence 
my future destiny. I can never be sufficiently grateful for the 
interest you unceasingly take in my welfare. One thing is 
clear — that Kelso cannot be my abiding place for aye." The 
great bookseller, Longman, repaired to Scotland soon after this, 
and made an offer for the copyright of the Minstrelsy, the 
third volume included. This was accepted, and it was at last 
settled that Sir Tristrem should appear in a separate shape. 
In July Scott proceeded to the Borders with Ley den. " We 
have just concluded," he tells Ellis, " an excursion of two or 
three weeks through my jurisdiction of Selkirkshire, where, in 
defiance of mountains, rivers, and bogs, damp and dry, we have 
penetrated the very recesses of Ettrick Forest, to which dis- 
trict, if I ever have the happiness of welcoming you, you will 
be convinced that I am truly the sheriff of the ' cairn and the 
scaur.' In the course of our grand tour, besides the risks of 



100 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

swamping and breaking our necks, we encountered the formid- 
able hardships of sleeping upon peat-stacks, and eating mutton 
slain by no common butcher, but deprived of life by the judg- 
ment of God, as a coroner's inquest would express themselves. 
I have, however, not only escaped safe ' per varios casus, per 
tot discrimina rerum,' but returned loaded with the treasures 
of oral tradition. The principal result of our inquiries has 
been a complete and perfect copy of Maitland with his Auld 
Berd Graie, referred to by Douglas in his Palice of Honour. 
You may guess the surprise of Leyden and myself when this 
was presented to us, copied down from the recitation of an old 
shepherd, by a country farmer, and with no greater corrup- 
tions than might be supposed to be introduced by the lapse of 
time, and the ignorance of reciters." 

Leyden seems to have spent much of that autumn at the 
Lasswade cottage, and here he encountered Joseph Eitson. 
Their host delighted to detail the scene that occurred when his 
two rough allies first met at dinner. Well knowing Bitson's 
holy horror of all animal food, Leyden complained that the 
joint on the table was overdone. "Indeed, for that matter," 
cried he, " meat can never be too little done, and raw is best of 
all." He sent to the kitchen accordingly for a plate of liter- 
ally raw beef, and manfully ate it up, with no sauce but the 
exquisite ruefulness of the Pythagorean's glances. Mr. R. 
Gillies, a gentleman of the Scotch Bar (since known for some 
excellent translations from the German), was present another 
day when Bitson was in Scotland. " In approaching the cot- 
tage," he says, " I was struck with the exceeding air of neat- 
ness that prevailed around. The hand of tasteful cultivation 
had been there, and all methods employed to convert an ordi- 
nary thatched cottage into a handsome and comfortable abode. 
At this early period, Scott was more like the portrait by Saxon, 
engraved for the Lady of the Lake, than to any subsequent 
picture. He retained in features and form an impress of that 
elasticity and youthful vivacity, which he used to complain 
wore off after he was forty, and by his own account was ex- 
changed for the plodding heaviness of an operose student. He 
had now, indeed, somewhat of a boyish gaiety of look, and in 
person was tall, slim, and extremely active." He and Erskine 
were about to start on a walk to Boslin, and Mr. Gillies accom- 
panied them. In the course of their walk, Scott's foot slipped, 
as he was scrambling towards a cave on the edge of a precipi- 
tous bank, and " had there been no trees in the way " (says 
this writer), " he must have been killed ; but midway he was 



BOEDER MINSTRELSY. 101 

stopped by a large root of hazel, when, instead of struggling, 
which would have made matters greatly worse, he seemed per- 
fectly resigned to his fate, and slipped through the tangled 
thicket till he lay flat on the river's brink. He rose in an 
instant from his recumbent attitude, and with a hearty laugh 
called out — Now, let me see who else will do the like. He 
scrambled up the cliff with alacrity, and entered the cave, 
where we had a long dialogue." Even after he was an old and 
hoary man, he continually encountered such risks with the 
same recklessness. The extraordinary strength of his hands 
and arms was his great reliance in all such difficulties, and if 
he could see anything to lay hold of, he was afraid of no leap, 
or rather hop, that came in his way. Mr. Gillies adds, that 
when they drew near the famous chapel of Eoslin, Erskine 
expressed a hope that they might, as habitual visitors, escape 
hearing the usual endless story of the old woman that shewed 
the ruins ; but Scott answered, " There is a pleasure in the 
song which none but the songstress knows, and by telling her 
we know it all already, we should make the poor devil 
unhappy." 

On their return to the cottage, Scott inquired for the learned 
cabbage-eater, who had been expected to dinner. " Indeed," 
answered his wife, " you may be happy he is not here — he is 
so very disagreeable. Mr. Ley den, I believe, frightened him 
away." It turned out that it was even so. When Bitson 
appeared, a round of cold beef was on the luncheon-table, and 
Mrs. Scott, forgetting his peculiar creed, offered him a slice. 
" The antiquary, in his indignation, expressed himself in such 
outrageous terms to the lady, that Leyden first tried to correct 
him by ridicule, and then, on the madman growing more vio- 
lent, became angry in his turn, till at last he threatened, that 
if he were not silent, he would thraw Ms neck. Scott shook his 
head at this recital, which Leyden observing, grew vehement in 
his own justification. Scott said not a word in reply, but took 
up a large bunch of feathers fastened to a stick, denominated 
a duster, and shook it about the student's ears till he laughed 
— then changed the subject." All this is very characteristic of 
the parties. — Scott's playful aversion to dispute was a trait in 
his mind and manners, that could alone have enabled him to 
make use at one and the same time, and for the same purpose, 
of two such persons as Eitson and Leyden. 1 

Shortly after this visit, Leyden went to London, and in the 
letter that introduced him to Ellis, Scott mentions, among 

1 See Gillies's llemuiiscences of Sir Walter Scott. 



102 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

other tilings to be included in the third volume of the Min- 
strelsy, " a long poem " from his own pen — " a kind of ro- 
mance of Border chivalry, in a light-horseman sort of stanza." 
This refers to the first draught of The Lay of the Last Min- 
strel ; and the author's description of it as being " in a light- 
horseman sort of stanza," was probably suggested by the cir- 
cumstances under which the greater part of that draught had 
been accomplished. He has told us, in his Introduction of 
1830, that the poem originated in a request of the young and 
lovely Countess of Dalkeith, that he would write a ballad on 
the legend of Gilpin Horner : that he began it at Lasswade, 
and read the opening stanzas, as soon as they were written, to 
Erskine and Cranstoun: that their reception of these was 
apparently so cold as to disgust him with what he had done ; 
but that finding, a few days afterwards, that the verses had 
nevertheless excited their curiosity, and haunted their mem- 
ory, he was encouraged to resume the undertaking. The scene 
and date of this resumption I owe to the recollection of the 
then Cornet of the Light-horse. "While the troop were on per- 
manent duty at Musselburgh, in the autumnal recess of 1802, 
the Quarter-Master, during a charge on Portobello sands, 
received a kick of a horse, which confined him for three days 
to his lodgings. Mr. Skene found him busy with his pen ; and 
he produced before these three days expired the first canto of 
the Lay, very nearly, if his friend's memory may be trusted, 
in the state in which it was ultimately published. That the 
whole poem was sketched and filled in with extraordinary 
rapidity, there can be no difficulty in believing. He himself 
says (in the Introduction of 1830), that after he had once got 
fairly into the vein, it proceeded at the rate of about a canto in 
a week. The Lay, however, like the Tristrem, soon outgrew the 
dimensions which he had originally contemplated ; the design 
of including it in the third volume of the Minstrelsy was of 
course abandoned; and it did not appear until nearly three 
years after that fortunate mishap on the beach of Portobello. 

Next spring, Scott hurried up to London as soon as the Court 
rose, in hopes of seeing Lej'den once more before he left Eng- 
land ; but he came too late. He thus writes to Ballantyne, on 
the 21st April 1803 : — " I have to thank you for the accuracy 
with which the Minstrelsy is thrown off. Longman and Bees 
are delighted with the printing. I mean this note to be added, 
by way of advertisement : — 'In the press, and will speedily be 
published, the Lay of the Last Minstrel, by Walter Scott, Esq., 
Editor of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Also Sir Tris- 



BOEDER MINSTBELSY. 103 

trem, a Metrical Romance, by Thomas of Ercildoune, called the 
Rhyiner, edited from an ancient MS., with an Introduction and 
Notes, by Walter Scott, Esq.' Will you cause such a thing to 
be appended in your own way and fashion ? " 

This letter is dated "No. 15 Piccadilly West," — he and Mrs. 
Scott being there domesticated under the roof of the late M. 
Charles Dumergue, a man of superior abilities and excellent 
education, well known as surgeon-dentist to the royal family — 
who had been intimately acquainted with the Charpentiers in 
France, and warmly befriended Mrs. Scott's mother on her first 
arrival in England. M. Dumergue's house was, throughout the 
whole period of the emigration, liberally opened to the exiles of 
his native country; nor did some of the noblest of those unfort- 
unate refugees scruple to make a free use of his purse, as well 
as of his hospitality. Here Scott met much highly interesting 
French society, and until a child of his own was established in 
London, he never thought of taking up his abode anywhere else, 
as often as he had occasion to be in town. 

The letter is addressed to " Mr. James Ballantyne, printer, 
Abbey-hill, Edinburgh;" which shews, that before the third 
volume of the Minstrelsy passed through the press, the migra- 
tion recommended two years earlier had at length taken place. 
" It was about the end of 1802," says Ballantyne, " that I closed 
with a plan so congenial to my wishes. I removed, bag and 
baggage, to Edinburgh, finding accommodation for two presses, 
and a proof one, in the precincts of Holyrood-house, then de- 
riving new lustre and interest from the recent arrival of the 
royal exiles of France. In these obscure premises some of the 
most beautiful productions of what we called The Border Press 
were printed." The Memorandum states, that Scott having 
renewed his hint as to pecuniary assistance, as soon as the 
printer found his finances straitened, " a liberal loan was ad- 
vanced accordingly." 

Heber, and Macintosh, then at the height of his reputation 
as a conversationist, and daily advancing also at the Bar, had 
been ready to welcome Scott in town as old friends ; and Rog- 
ers, William Stewart Rose, and several other men of literary 
eminence, were at the same time added to the list of his ac- 
quaintance. His principal object, however — having missed 
Ley den — was to make extracts from some MSS. in the library 
of John Duke of Roxburgh, for the illustration of the Tristrem ; 
and he derived no small assistance in other researches of the 
like kind from the collections which the indefatigable and 
obliging Douce placed at his disposal. Having completed 



104 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

these labours, lie and Mrs. Scott went, with Heber and Donee, 
to visit Ellis at Sunninghill, where they spent a happy week, 
and their host and hostess heard the first two or three cantos 
of the Lay of the Last Minstrel read under an old oak in 
Windsor Forest. 

From, thence they proceeded to Oxford, accompanied by 
Heber ; and it was on this occasion that Scott first saw his 
friend's brother, Reginald, in afterdays the apostolic Bishop 
of Calcutta. He had just been declared the successful can- 
didate for that year's poetical prize, and read to Scott at 
breakfast, in Brazen Nose College, the MS. of his Palestine. 
Scott observed that, in the verses on Solomon's Temple, one 
striking circumstance had escaped him, namely, that no tools 
were used in its erection. Reginald retired for a few minutes 
to the corner of the room, and returned with the beautiful 
lines, — 

" No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, 
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. 
Majestic silence," &c. 

After inspecting the University and Blenheim, Scott re- 
turned to Edinburgh, where the completed Minstrelsy was 
published in the end of May. The reprint of the 1st and 
2d volumes went to 1000 copies — of volume third Messrs. 
Longman had ordered 1500. A complete edition of 1250 
copies followed in 1806; a fourth, also of 1250, in 1810; a 
fifth, of 1500, in 1812 ; a sixth, of 500, in 1820 ; and since 
then it has been incorporated in Scott's Collected Poetry. 
Of the Continental and American editions I can say nothing, 
except that they have been very numerous. The book was 
soon translated into German, Danish, and. Swedish; and the 
structure of those languages being very favourable to the 
undertaking, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border has thus 
become widely naturalised among nations themselves rich in 
similar treasures of legendary lore. 

He speaks, in an Essay of his closing years, as if the first 
reception of the Minstrelsy on the south of the Tweed had 
been cold. "The curiosity of the English," he says, "was 
not much awakened by poems in the rude garb of antiquity, 
accompanied with notes referring to the obscure feuds of 
barbarous clans, of whose very names civilised history was 
ignorant." In writing those beautiful Introductions of 1830, 
however, he seems to have trusted entirely to his recollection 
of days long gone by, and he has accordingly let fall many 



BORDER MINSTRELSY. 105 

statements which we must take with some allowance. His 
impressions as to the reception of the Minstrelsy were differ- 
ent, when writing to his brother-in-law, Charles Carpenter, on 
the 3d March 1803, for the purpose of introducing Leyden, he 
said — "I have contrived to turn a very slender portion of 
literary talents to some account, by a publication of- the poeti- 
cal antiquities of the Border, where the old people had pre- 
served many ballads descriptive of the manners of the country 
during the wars with England. This trifling collection was 
so well received by a discerning public, that, after receiving 
about L.100 profit for the first edition, which my vanity 
cannot omit informing you went off in six months, I have 
sold the copyright for L.500 more." This is not the language 
of disappointment ; and though the edition of 1803 did not 
move off quite so rapidly as the first, and the work did not 
perhaps attract much notice beyond the more cultivated 
students of literature, until the Editor's own Lay lent gen- 
eral interest to whatever was connected with his name, I sus- 
pect there never was much ground for accusing the English 
public of regarding the Minstrelsy with more coldness than 
the Scotch — the population of the Border districts them- 
selves being, of course, excepted. Had the sale of the origi- 
nal edition been chiefly Scotch, I doubt whether Messrs. 
Longman would have so readily offered L.500, in those days 
of the trade a large sum, for the second. Scott had become 
habituated, long before 1830, to a scale of bookselling trans- 
actions, measured by which the largest editions and copy- 
monies of his own early days appeared insignificant ; but the 
evidence seems complete that lie was well contented at the 
time. 

He certainly had every reason to be so as to the impression 
which the Minstrelsy made on the minds of those entitled 
to think for themselves upon such a subject. The ancient 
ballads in his collection, which had never been printed at all 
before, were in number forty-three; and of the others — 
most of which were in fact all but new to the modern reader — 
it is little to say that his editions were superior in all respects 
to those that had preceded them. He had, I firmly believe, 
interpolated hardly a line or even an epithet of his own ; but 
his diligent zeal had put him in possession of a variety of 
copies in different stages of preservation ; and to the task of 
selecting a standard text among such a diversity of materials, 
he brought a knowledge of old manners and phraseology, and 
a manly simplicity of taste, such as had never before been 



106 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

united in the person of a poetical antiquary. From among a 
hundred corruptions he seized, with instinctive tact, the primi- 
tive diction and imagery ; and produced strains in which the 
unbroken energy of half-civilised ages, their stern and deep 
passions, their daring adventures and cruel tragedies, and 
even their rude wild humour, are reflected with almost the 
brightness of a Homeric mirror, interrupted by hardly a blot 
of what deserves to be called vulgarity, and totally free from 
any admixture of artificial sentimentalism. As a picture of 
manners, the Scottish Minstrelsy is not surpassed, if equalled, 
by any similar body of poetry preserved in any other country ; 
and it unquestionably owes its superiority in this respect over 
Percy's Reliques, to the Editor's conscientious fidelity, on the 
one hand, which prevented the introduction of anything new 
— to his pure taste, on the other, in the balancing of discor- 
dant recitations. His introductory essays and notes teemed 
with curious knowledge, not hastily grasped for the occasion, 
but gradually gleaned and sifted by the patient labour of years, 
and presented with an easy, unaffected propriety and elegance 
of arrangement and expression, which it may be doubted if 
he ever materially surpassed in the happiest of his imaginative 
narrations. I well remember, when Waverley was a new book, 
and all the world were puzzling themselves about its author- 
ship, to have heard the Poet of " The Isle of Palms " exclaim 
impatiently — "I wonder what all these people are perplexing 
themselves with : have they forgotten the prose of the Min- 
strelsy ? " Even had the Editor inserted none of his own 
verse, the work would have contained enough, and more than 
enough, to found a lasting and graceful reputation. 

It is not to be denied, however, that the Minstrelsy of the 
Scottish Border has derived a very large accession of interest 
from the subsequent career of its Editor. One of the critics 
of that day said that the book contained "the elements of a 
hundred historical romances;" — and this critic was a pro- 
phetic one. No person who has not gone through its volumes 
for the express purpose of comparing their contents with his 
great original works, can have formed a conception of the end- 
less variety of incidents and images now expanded and embla- 
zoned by his mature art, of which the first hints may be found 
either in the text of those primitive ballads, or in the notes, 
which the happy rambles of his youth had gathered together 
for their illustration. In the edition of the Minstrelsy pub- 
lished since his death, not a few such instances are pointed 
out; but the list might have been extended far beyond the 



BOEDER MINSTRELSY. 107 

limits which such, an edition allowed. The taste and fancy of 
Scott appear to have been formed as early as his moral char- 
acter ; and he had, before he passed the threshold of author- 
ship, assembled about him, in the uncalculating delight of 
native enthusiasm, almost all the materials on which his genius 
was destined to be employed for the gratification and instruc- 
tion of the world. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

Contributions to the Edinburgh Keview — Wordsworth — Hogg — Sir 
Tristrem — Removal to Ashestiel — Mungo Park — Publication of the 
Lay of the Last Minstrel — Partnership with James Ballantyne — 
Visit to London— Appointment as Clerk of Session. 1804-1806. 

Shortly after the complete Minstrelsy issued from the 
press, Scott made his first appearance as a reviewer. The 
Edinburgh Review had been commenced in October 1802, under 
the superintendence of the Rev. Sydney Smith, with whom, 
during his short residence in Scotland, he had lived on terms 
of great kindness and familiarity. Mr. Smith soon resigned 
the editorship to Mr. Jeffrey, who had by this time been for 
several years among the most valued of Scott's friends and 
companions at the Bar ; and, the new journal being far from 
committing itself to violent politics at the outset, he appreci- 
ated the brilliant talents regularly engaged in it far too highly, 
not to be well pleased with the opportunity of occasionally 
exercising his pen in its service. His first contribution was an 
article on Southey's Aniadis of Gaul. The reader may now 
trace the sequence of his articles in the Collective edition of 
his Miscellaneous Prose (1836). 

During the summer of 1803, his chief literary work was on 
the Sir Tristrem, but the LTay of the Last Minstrel made prog- 
ress at intervals — mostly, it would seem, when he was in 
quarters with his troop of horse, and necessarily without his 
books of reference. The resumption of the war (after the 
short peace of Amiens) had given renewed animation to the 
volunteers, and their spirit was kept up during two or three 
years more by the unintermitted threats of invasion. His letters 
abound in sketches of the camp-life at Musselburgh. To Miss 
Seward, for example, he says, in July : — " We are assuming a 
very military appearance. Three regiments of militia, with a 
formidable park of artillery, are encamped just by us. The 
Edinburgh Troop, to which I have the honour to be quarter- 
master, consists entirely of young gentlemen of family, and is, 
of course, admirably well mounted and armed. There are 

108 



WORDSWORTH. 109 

other four troops in the regiment, consisting of yeomanry, 
whose iron faces and muscular forms announce the hardness of 
the climate against which they wrestle, and the powers which 
nature has given them to contend with and subdue it. These 
corps have been easily raised in Scotland, the farmers being in 
general a high-spirited race of men, fond of active exercises, 
and patient in hardship and fatigue. For myself, I must own 
that to one who has, like myself, la t&te un peu exaltee, ' the 
pomp and circumstance of war ' gives, for a time, a very poig- 
nant and pleasing sensation. The imposing appearance of 
cavalry, in particular, and the rush which marks their onset, 
appear to me to partake highly of the sublime. Perhaps I am 
the more attached to this sort of sport of swords because my 
health requires much active exercise, and a lameness contracted 
in childhood renders it inconvenient for me to take it otherwise 
than on horseback. I have, too, a hereditary attachment to 
the animal — not, I natter myself, of the common jockey cast, 
but because I regard him as the kindest and most generous of 
the subordinate tribes. I hardly even except the dogs ; at 
least they are usually so much better treated, that compassion 
for the steed should be thrown into the scale when we weigh 
their comparative merits. My wife (a foreigner) never sees a 
horse ill-used without asking what the poor horse has done in 
his state of pre-existence ? I would fain hope they have been 
carters or hackney-coachmen, and are only experiencing a re- 
tort of the ill-usage they have formerly inflicted. What think 
you ? " 

It was in that autumn that Scott first saw Wordsworth. 
Their common acquaintance, Stoddart, had so often talked of 
them to each other, that they met as if they had not been 
strangers ; and they parted friends. 

Mr. and Miss Wordsworth had just completed their tour in the 
Highlands, of which so many incidents have since been immor- 
talised, both in the poet's verse and in the hardly less poetical 
prose of his sister's Diary. On the morning of the 17th of 
September, having left their carriage at Koslin, they walked 
down the valley to Lasswade, and arrived there before Mr. and 
Mrs. Scott had risen. " We were received," Mr. Wordsworth 
has told me, " with that frank cordiality which, under whatever 
circumstances I afterwards met him, always marked his man- 
ners ; and, indeed, I found him then in every respect — except, 
perhaps, that his animal spirits were somewhat higher — pre- 
cisely the same man that you knew him in later life ; the same 
lively, entertaining conversation, full of anecdote, and averse 



110 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

from disquisition ; the same unaffected modesty about himself ; 
the same cheerful and benevolent and hopeful views of man 
and the world. He partly read and partly recited, sometimes 
in an enthusiastic style of chant, the first four cantos of the 
Lay of the Last Minstrel ; and the novelty of the manners, 
the clear picturesque descriptions, and the easy glowing 
energy of much of the verse, greatly delighted me." 

After this he walked with the tourists to Hoslin, and prom- 
ised to meet them in two days at Melrose. The night before 
they reached Melrose they slept at the little quiet inn of Cloven- 
ford, where, on mentioning his name, they were received with 
all sorts of attention and kindness, — the landlady observing 
that Mr. Scott, " who was a very clever gentleman," was an old 
friend of the house, and usually spent a good deal of time there 
during the fishing season ; but, indeed, says Mr. Wordsworth, 
" wherever we named him, we found the word acted as an open 
sesamum; and I believe that, in the character of the Sheriff's 
friends, we might have counted on a hearty welcome under any 
roof in the Border country." 

He met them at Melrose on the 19th, and escorted them 
through the Abbey, pouring out his rich stores of history and 
tradition. They then dined together at the inn; but Miss 
Wordsworth observed that there was some difficulty about 
arranging matters for the night, " the landlady refusing to 
settle anything until she had ascertained from the Sheriff him- 
self that he had no objection to sleep in the same room with 
William." Scott was thus far on his way to the Circuit Court 
at Jedburgh, in his capacity of Sheriff, and there his new friends 
again joined him ; but he begged that they would not enter the 
court, " for," said he, " I really would not like you to see the sort 
of figure I cut there." They did see him casually, however, in 
his cocked hat and sword, marching in the Judge's procession 
to the sound of one cracked trumpet, and were then not sur- 
prised that he should have been a little ashamed of the whole 
ceremonial. He introduced to them his friend William Laidlaw, 
who was attending the court as a juryman, and who, having 
read some of Wordsworth's verses in a newspaper, was exceed- 
ingly anxious to be of the party, when they explored at leisure, 
all the law-business being over, the beautiful valley of the Jed, 
and the ruins of the Castle of Fernie^erst, the original fastness 
of the noble family of Lothian. The grove of stately ancient 
elms about and below the ruin was seen to great advantage in 
a fine, grey, breezy autumnal afternoon j and Mr. Wordsworth 
happened to say, " What life there is in trees ! " — " How differ- 



WORDSWORTH. Ill 

ent," said Scott, " was the feeling of a very intelligent young 
lady, born and bred in the Orkney Islands, who lately came to 
spend a season in this neighbourhood ! She told me nothing 
in the mainland scenery had so much disappointed her as 
woods and trees. She found them so dead and lifeless, that 
she could never help pining after the eternal motion and variety 
of the ocean. And so back she has gone, and I believe nothing 
will ever tempt her from the wind-swept Orcades again." 

Next day they proceeded up the Teviot to Hawick, Scott 
entertaining his friends with some legend or ballad connected 
with every tower or rock they passed. He made them stop to 
admire particularly a scene of deep and solemn retirement, 
called Home's Pool, from its having been the daily haunt of a 
contemplative schoolmaster, known to him in his youth ; and 
at Kirkton he pointed out the little village schoolhouse, to 
which his friend Leyden had walked six or eight miles every 
day across the moors, " Avhen a poor barefooted boy." From 
Hawick, where they spent the night, he led them next morning 
to the brow of a hill, from which they could see a wide range 
of the Border mountains, Euberslaw, the Carter, and the 
Cheviots ; and lamented that neither their engagements nor his 
own would permit them to make at this time an excursion into 
the wilder glens of Liddesdale, "where," said he, "I have 
strolled so often and so long, that I may say I have a home in 
every farm-house." "And, indeed," adds Mr. Wordsworth, 
" wherever we went with him, he seemed to know everybody, 
and everybody to know and like him." Here they parted, — 
the Words worths to pursue their journey homeward by Esk- 
dale — he to return to Lasswade. 

The impression on Mr. Wordsworth's mind was, that on the 
whole he attached much less importance to his literary labours 
and reputation than to his bodily sports, exercises, and social 
amusements ; and yet he spoke of his profession as if he had 
already given up almost all hope of rising by it; and some 
allusion being made to its profits, observed that " he was sure 
he could, if he chose, get more money than he should ever wish 
to have from the booksellers." 1 

This confidence in his own literary resources appeared to 
Mr. Wordsworth remarkable — the more so, from the careless 
way in which its expression dropt from him. As to his 

1 1 have drawn up the account of this meeting from my recollf ction 
partly of Mr. Wordsworth's conversation — partly from that of his sister's 
charming " Diary," which he was so kind as to read over to me on the 
lGth May 183(3. 



112 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

despondence concerning the Bar, I confess his fee-book indi- 
cates less ground for such a feeling than I should have 
expected to discover there. His practice brought him, as we 
have seen, in the session of 1796-7, L.144, 10s. ; — its proceeds 
fell down, in the first year of his married life, to L.79, 17s. ; 
but they rose again, in 1798-9, to L.135, 9s. ; amounted, in 
1799-1800, to L.129, 13s. ; in 1800-1, to L.170; in 1801-2, to 
L.202, 12s. ; and in the session that had just elapsed (which is 
the last included in the record before me), to L.228, 18s. 

I have already said something of the 'beginning of Scott's 
acquaintance with "the Ettrick Shepherd." Shortly after their 
first meeting, Hogg, coming into Edinburgh with a flock of 
sheep, was seized with a sudden ambition of seeing himself in 
type, and he wrote out that same night a few ballads, already 
famous in the Forest, which some obscure bookseller gratified 
him by printing accordingly ; but they appear to have attracted 
no notice beyond their original sphere. Hogg then made an 
excursion into the Highlands, in quest of employment as over- 
seer of some extensive sheep-farm ; but, though Scott had fur- 
nished him with strong recommendations to various friends, 
he returned without success. He printed an account of his 
travels, however, in a set of letters in the Scots Magazine, 
which, though exceedingly rugged and uncouth, had abundant 
traces of the native shrewdness and genuine poetical feeling 
of this remarkable man. These also failed to excite attention ; 
but, undeterred by such disappointments, the Shepherd no 
sooner read the third volume of the Minstrelsy, than he made up 
his mind that the Editor's " Imitations of the Ancients " were 
by no means what they should have been. "Immediately," 
he says, in one of his many memoirs of himself, "I chose a 
number of traditional facts, and set about imitating the man- 
ner of the ancients myself." These imitations he transmitted 
to Scott, who warmly praised the many striking beauties 
scattered over their rough surface. The next time that busi- 
ness carried him to Edinburgh, Scott invited him to dinner, in 
company with Laidlaw, who happened also to be in town, and 
some other admirers of the rustic genius. When Hogg entered 
the drawing-room, Mrs. Scott, being at the time in a delicate 
state of health, was reclining on a sofa. The Shepherd, after 
being presented, and making his best bow, took possession of 
another sofa placed opposite to hers, and stretched himself 
thereupon at all his length ; for, as he said afterwards, " I 
thought I could never do wrong to copy the lady of the house." 
As his dress at this period was precisely that in which any 



HOGG. 113 

ordinary herdsman attends cattle to the market, and his hands, 
moreover, bore most legible marks of a recent sheep-smearing, 
the lady of the house did not observe with perfect equanimity 
the novel nsage to which her chintz was exposed. The Shep- 
herd, however, remarked nothing of all this — dined heartily 
and drank freely, and, by jest, anecdote, and song, afforded 
plentiful merriment. As the liquor operated, his familiarity 
increased ; from Mr. Scott, he advanced to " Sherra," and 
thence to "Scott," "Walter," and "Wattie," — until, at sup- 
per, he fairly convulsed the whole party by addressing Mrs. 
Scott as "Charlotte." 

The collection entitled "The Mountain Bard" was event- 
ually published by Constable, in consequence of Scott's recom- 
mendation, and this work did at last afford Hogg no slender 
share of the reputation for which he had so long thirsted. It 
is not my business, however, to pursue the details of his story. 

Sir Tristrem was at length published on the 2d of May 
1804, by Constable, who, however, expected so little popularity 
for the work, that the edition consisted only of 150 copies. 
These were sold at a high price (two guineas), otherwise they 
would not have been enough to cover the expenses of paper 
and printing. Mr. Ellis and other friends were much dissatis- 
fied with these arrangements ; but I doubt not that Constable 
was a better judge than any of them. The work, however, 
partook in due time of the favour attending its editor's name, 
and had been twice reprinted before it was included in the col- 
lective editions of his poetry. It was not a performance from 
which he had ever anticipated any pecuniary profit, but it 
maintained at least, if it did not raise, his reputation in the 
circle of his fellow-antiquaries ; and his own Conclusion, in the 
manner of the original romance, must always be admired as a 
specimen of skill and dexterity. As to the arguments of the 
Introduction, I shall not in this place attempt any discussion. 
AVhether the story of Tristrem was first told in Welsh, Armori- 
can, French, or English verse, there can, I think, be no doubt 
that it had been told in verse, with such success as to obtain 
very general renown, by Thomas of Ercildoune, and that the 
copy edited by Scott was either the composition of one who 
had heard the old Rhymer recite his lay, or the identical lay 
itself. The introduction of Thomas's name in the third person, 
as not the author, but the author's authority, appears to have 
had a great share in convincing Scott that the Auchinleck 
MS. contained not the original, but the copy of an English 
admirer and contemporary. This point seems to have been 



114 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

rendered more doubtful by some quotations in the recent edi- 
tion of Warton's History of English Poetry ; but the argument 
derived from the enthusiastic exclamation, "God help Sir 
Tristrem the knight — he fought for England," still remains ; 
and stronger perhaps even than that, in the opinion of modern 
philologists, is the total absence of any Scottish or even North- 
umbrian peculiarities in the diction. All this controversy may 
be waived here. Scott's object and delight was to revive the 
fame of the Rhymer, whose traditional history he had listened 
to while yet an infant among the crags of Smailholme. He 
had already celebrated him in a noble ballad ; * he now devoted 
a volume to elucidate a fragment supposed to be substantially 
his work ; and we shall find that thirty years after, when the 
lamp of his own genius was all but spent, it could still revive 
and throw out at least some glimmerings of its original bright- 
ness at the name of Thomas of Ercildoune. 2 

In the course of the preceding summer, the Lord-Lieutenant 
of Selkirkshire complained of Scott's military zeal as inter- 
fering sometimes with the discharge of his shrieval functions, 
and took occasion to remind him, that the law, requiring every 
Sheriff to reside at least four months in the year within his 
own jurisdiction, had not hitherto been complied with. "While, 
in consequence of a renewal of this hint, he was seeking about 
for some " lodge in the Eorest," his kinsman of Harden sug- 
gested that the tower of Auld Wat (the Stammschloss of their 
family) might be refitted, so as to serve his purpose; and he 
received the proposal with enthusiastic delight. On a more 
careful inspection of the localities, however, he became sen- 
sible that he would be practically at a greater distance from 
county business of all kinds at Harden, than if he were to 
continue at Lasswade. Just at this time, the house of Ashes- 
tiel, situated on the southern bank of the Tweed, a few miles 
from Selkirk, became vacant by the death of its proprietor, 
Colonel Russell, who had married a sister of Scott's mother, 
and the consequent dispersion of the family. The young 
Laird of Ashestiel, his cousin, was then in India; and the 
Sheriff took a lease of the house, with a small farm adjoin- 
ing. On the 4th May, two days after the Tristrem had been 
published, he says to Ellis, who was meditating a northern 
tour — "I have been engaged in travelling backwards and 
forwards to Selkirkshire upon little pieces of business, just 
important enough to prevent my doing anything to purpose. 

1 See Poetical Works (Edition 1841), pp. 572-581. 

2 Compare the Fifth Chapter of Castle Dangerous. 



BEMOVAL TO ASRESTIEL. 115 

One great matter, however, I have achieved, which is, procur- 
ing myself a place of residence, which will save me these 
teasing migrations in future, so that though I part with my 
sweet little cottage on the banks of the Esk, you will find 
me this summer in the very centre of the ancient B-eged, in 
a decent farm-house overhanging the Tweed, and situated in a 
wild pastoral country." And again, on the 19th, he thus apol- 
ogises for not having answered a letter of the tenth : — " For 
more than a month my head was fairly tenanted by ideas, 
which, though strictly pastoral and rural, were neither literary 
nor poetical. Long sheep and short sheep, and tups and gim- 
mers, and hogs and dinmonts, had made a perfect sheepfold 
of my understanding, which is liardly yet cleared of them. 1 
I hope Mrs. Ellis will clap a bridle on her imagination. 
Ettrick Forest boasts finely shaped hills and clear romantic 
streams ; but, alas ! they are bare to wildness, and denuded 
of the beautiful natural wood with which they were formerly 
shaded. It is mortifying to see that, though wherever the 
sheep are excluded, the copse has immediately sprung up in 
abundance, so that enclosures only are wanting to restore the 
wood wherever it might be useful or ornamental, yet hardly a 
proprietor has attempted to give it fair play for a resurrection." 
On the 10th of June 1804, died, at his seat of Rosebank, 
Captain Eobert Scott, the affectionate uncle whose name has 
often occurred in this narrative. " He was," says his nephew 
to Ellis, on the 18th, "a man of universal benevolence and 
great kindness towards his friends, and to me individually. 
His manners were so much tinged with the habits of celibacy 
as to render them peculiar, though by no means unpleasingly 
so, and his profession (that of a seaman) gave a high colour- 
ing to the whole. The loss is one which, though the course 
of nature led me to expect it, did not take place at last with- 
out considerable pain to my feelings. The arrangement of his 
affairs, and the distribution of his small fortune among his 
relations, will devolve in a great measure upon me. He has 
distinguished me by leaving me a beautiful little villa on 
the banks of the Tweed, with every possible convenience an- 
nexed to it, and about thirty acres of the finest land in Scot- 

1 Hogg describes the amusement of the Sheriff in 1801, upon hearing a 
discussion on the meaning of long sheep and short sheep (so called 
according to the length of the fleece) ; and adds — "When I saw the 
very same words repeated near the beginning (p. 4) of the Black Dwarf, 
how could I be mistaken of the author?" — Autobiography prefixed to 
Altrive Tales. 



116 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

land. Notwithstanding, however, the temptation that this 
bequest offers, I continue to pursue my Reged plan, and expect 
to be settled at Ashestiel in the course of a month. Rose- 
bank is situated so near the village of Kelso, as hardly to be 
sufficiently a country residence ; besides, it is hemmed in by 
hedges and ditches, not to mention Dukes and Lady Dowagers, 
which are bad things for little people. It is expected to sell 
to great advantage. I shall buy a mountain farm with the 
purchase-money, and be quite the Laird of the Cairn and the 
Scaur." 

Scott sold Rosebank in the course of the year for L.5000. 
This bequest made an important change in his pecuniary 
position, and influenced accordingly the arrangements of his 
future life. Independently of practice at the Bar, and of 
literary profits, he was now, with his little patrimony, his 
Sheriffship, and about L.200 per annum arising from the stock 
ultimately settled on his wife, in possession of a fixed revenue 
of nearly L.1000 a year. 

Ashestiel will be visited by many for his sake, as long as 
Waverley and Marmion are remembered. A more beautiful 
situation for the residence of a poet could not be conceived. 
The house was then a small one, but, compared with the cot- 
tage at Lasswade, its accommodations were amply sufficient. 
You approached it through an old-fashioned garden, with holly 
hedges, and broad, green, terrace walks. On one side, close 
under the windows, is a deep ravine, clothed with venerable 
trees, down which a mountain rivulet is heard, more than 
seen, in its progress to the Tweed. The river itself is sepa- 
rated from the high bank on which the house stands only by 
a narrow meadow of the richest verdure. Opposite, and all 
around, are the green hills. The valley there is narrow, and 
the aspect in every direction is that of perfect pastoral repose. 
The heights immediately behind are those which divide the 
Tweed from the Yarrow ; and the latter celebrated stream lies 
within an easy ride, in the course of which the traveller passes 
through a variety of the finest mountain scenery in the south 
of Scotland. No town is within seven miles but Selkirk, which 
was then still smaller and quieter than it is now ; there was 
hardly even a gentleman's family within visiting distance, 
except at Yair, a few miles lower on the Tweed, the ancient 
seat of the Pringles of Whytbank, and at Bowhill, between 
the Yarrow and Ettrick, where the Earl of Dalkeith used 
occasionally to inhabit a small shooting-lodge, which has since 
grown into a ducal residence. The country all around, with 



REMOVAL TO ASHESTIEL. 117 

here and there an insignificant exception, belongs to the Buc- 
cleuch estate ; so that, whichever way he chose to turn, the 
bard of the clan had ample room and verge enough for every 
variety of field sport ; and being then in the prime vigour of 
manhood, he was not slow to profit by these advantages. 
Meantime, the concerns of his own little farm, and the care 
of his absent relation's woods, gave him healthful occupation 
in the intervals of the chase ; and he had long, solitary even- 
ings for the uninterrupted exercise of his pen ; perhaps, on 
the whole, better opportunities of study than he had ever 
enjoyed before, or was to meet with elsewhere in later days. 

When he first examined Ashestiel, with a view to being his 
cousin's tenant, he thought of taking home James Hogg to 
superintend the sheep-farm, and keep watch over the house 
also during the winter. I am not able to tell exactly in what 
manner this proposal fell to the ground; but in truth the 
Sheriff had hardly been a week in possession of his new 
domains, before he made acquaintance with a character much 
better suited to his purpose than James Hogg ever could have 
been. I mean honest Thomas Purdie, his faithful servant — 
his affectionately devoted humble friend from this time until 
death parted them. Tom was first brought before him, in his 
capacity of Sheriff, on a charge of poaching, when the poor 
fellow gave such a touching account of his circumstances, — 
a wife, and I know not how many children, depending on his 
exertions — work scarce and grouse abundant, — and all this 
with a mixture of odd sly humour, — that the Sheriff's heart 
was moved. Tom escaped the penalty of the law — was taken 
into employment as shepherd, and shewed such zeal, activity, 
and shrewdness in that capacity, that Scott never had any 
occasion to repent of the step he soon afterwards took, in 
promoting him to the position which had been originally 
offered to James Hogg. 

It was also about the same time that he took into his ser- 
vice as coachman Peter Mathieson, brother-in-law to Thomas 
Purdie, another faithful servant, who never afterwards left 
him, and still (1848) survives his kind master. Scott's awk- 
ward management of the little phaeton had exposed his wife 
to more than one perilous overturn, before he agreed to set up 
a close carriage, and call in the assistance of this steady 
charioteer. 

During this autumn Scott formed the personal acquaintance 
of Mungo Park, the celebrated victim of African discovery. 
On his return from his first expedition, Park endeavoured to 



118 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

establish himself as a medical practitioner in the town of 
Hawick, but the drudgeries of that calling in such a district 
soon exhausted his ardent temper, and he was now living in 
seclusion in his native cottage at Fowlsheils on the Yarrow, 
nearly opposite Newark Castle. His brother, Archibald Park 
(then tenant of a large farm on the Buccleuch estate), a man 
remarkable for strength both of mind and body, introduced the 
traveller to the Sheriff. They soon became much attached 
to each other; and Scott supplied some interesting anecdotes 
of their brief intercourse to Mr. Wishaw, the editor of Park's 
Posthumous Journal, with which I shall blend a few minor 
circumstances, gathered from him in conversation long after- 
wards. " On one occasion," he says, " the traveller communi- 
cated some very remarkable adventures which had befallen him 
in Africa, but which he had not recorded in his book." On 
Scott's asking the cause of this silence, Mungo answered, " That 
in all cases where he had information to communicate, which 
he thought of importance to the public, he had stated the facts 
boldly, leaving it to his readers to give such credit to his state- 
ments as they might appear justly to deserve; but that he 
would not shock their faith, or render his travels more mar- 
vellous, by introducing circumstances, which, however true, 
were of little or no moment, as they related solely to his own 
personal adventures and escapes." This reply struck Scott as 
highly characteristic of the man ; and though strongly tempted 
to set down some of these marvels for Mr. Wishaw's use, he 
on reflection abstained from doing so, holding it unfair to 
record what the adventurer had deliberately chosen to suppress 
in his own narrative. He confirms the account given by Park's 
biographer of his cold and reserved manners to strangers ; and, 
in particular, of his disgust with the indirect questions which 
curious visitors would often put to him upon the subject of his 
travels. "This practice," said Mungo, "exposes me to two 
risks ; either that I may not understand the questions meant 
to be put, or that my answers to them may be misconstrued ; " 
and he contrasted such conduct with the frankness of Scott's 
revered friend Dr. Adam Fergusson, who, the very first day the 
traveller dined with him at Hallyards, spread a large map of 
Africa on the table, and made him trace out his progress there- 
upon, inch by inch, questioning him minutely as to every step 
he had taken. " Here, however," says Scott, " Dr. F. was 
using a privilege to which he was well entitled by his ven- 
erable age and high literary character, but which could not 
have been exercised with propriety by any common stranger." 



MUNGO PABK. 119 

Calling one day at Fowlsheils, and not finding Park at home, 
Scott walked in search of him along the banks of the Yarrow, 
which in that neighbourhood passes over various ledges of rock, 
forming deep pools and eddies between them. Presently he 
discovered his friend standing alone on the bank, plunging one 
stone after another into the water, and watching anxiously the 
bubbles as they rose to the surface. " This," said Scott, " ap- 
pears but an idle amusement for one who has seen so much 
stirring adventure." "Not so idle, perhaps, as you suppose," 
answered Mungo : — " This was the manner in which I used to 
ascertain the depth of a river in Africa before I ventured to 
cross it — judging whether the attempt would be safe, by the 
time the bubbles of air took to ascend." At this time Park's 
intention of a second expedition had never been revealed to 
Scott ; but he instantly formed the opinion that these experi- 
ments on Yarrow were connected with some such purpose. 

His thoughts had always continued to be haunted with 
Africa. He told Scott, that whenever he awoke suddenly in 
the night, owing to a nervous disorder with which he was 
troubled, he fancied himself still a prisoner in the tent of 
Ali ; but when the poet expressed some surprise that he should 
design again to revisit those scenes, he answered, that he would 
rather brave Africa and all its horrors, than wear out his life 
in long and toilsome rides over the hills of Scotland, for which 
the remuneration was hardly enough to keep soul and body 
together. 

Towards the end of the autumn, when about to quit his 
country for the last time, Park paid Scott a farewell visit, 
and slept at Ashestiel. Next morning his host accompanied 
him homewards over the wild chain of hills between the 
Tweed and the Yarrow. Park talked much of his new scheme, 
and mentioned his determination to tell his family that he had 
some business for a day or two in Edinburgh, and send them 
his blessing from thence, without returning to take leave. He 
had married, not long before, a pretty and amiable woman, and 
when they reached the Williamhope ridge, " the autumnal mist 
floating heavily and slowly down the valley of the Yarrow," 
presented to Scott's imagination " a striking emblem of the 
troubled and uncertain prospect which his undertaking af- 
forded." He remained, however, unshaken, and at length they 
reached the spot at which they had agreed to separate. A 
small ditch divided the moor from the road, and in going over 
it, Park's horse stumbled, and nearly fell. "I am afraid, 
Mungo," said the Sheriff, "that is a bad omen." To which 



120 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

he answered, smiling, " Freits (omens) follow those who look 
to them." With this expression Mnngo struck the spurs into 
his horse, and Scott never saw him again. His parting proverb, 
by the way, was probably suggested by one of the Border 
ballads, in which species of lore he was almost as great a 
proficient as the Sheriff himself; for we read in Edom o' 
Gordon, — 

" Them looks to freits, my master dear, 
Then freits will follow them." 

The brother of Mungo Park remained in Scott's neighbour- 
hood for some years, and was frequently his companion in his 
mountain rides. Though a man of the most dauntless tempera- 
ment, he was often alarmed at Scott's reckless horsemanship. 
" The de'il's in ye, Sherra," he would say ; " yeTl never halt 
till they bring you hame with your feet foremost." He rose 
greatly in favour, in consequence of the gallantry with which 
he assisted the Sheriff in seizing a gipsy, accused of murder, 
from amidst a group of similar desperadoes, on whom they had 
come unexpectedly in a desolate part of the country. 

To return to the Lay of the Last Miustrel : Ellis, understand- 
ing it to be now nearly ready for the press, writes to Scott, 
urging him to set it forth with some engraved illustrations — 
if possible, after Flaxman, whose splendid designs from Homer 
had shortly before made their appearance. He answers, 
August 21 — "I should fear Flaxman's genius is too classic 
to stoop to body forth my Gothic Borderers. Would there 
not be some risk of their resembling the antique of Homer's 
heroes, rather than the iron race of Salvator ? I should like 
at least to be at his elbow when at work. I wish very much 
I could have sent you the Lay while in MS., to have had the 
advantage of your opinion and corrections. But Ballantyne 
galled my kibes so severely during an unusual fit of activity, 
that I gave him the whole story in a sort of pet both with him 
and with it." 

There is a circumstance which must already have struck such 
of my readers as knew the author in his latter days, namely, 
the readiness with which he seems to have communicated this 
poem, in its progress, not only to his own familiar friends, but 
to new and casual acquaintances. We shall find him following 
the same course with his Marmion — but not, I think, with 
any of his subsequent works. His determination to consult 
the movements of his own mind alone in the conduct of his 
pieces, was probably taken before he began the Lay ; and he 



LAY OF THE LAST MWSTBEL. 121 

soon resolved to trust for the detection of minor inaccuracies 
to two persons only — James Ballantyne and William Erskine. 
The printer was himself a man of considerable literary talents : 
his own style had the incurable faults of pomposity and affec- 
tation ; but his eye for more venial errors in the writings of 
others was quick, and, though his personal address was apt to 
give a stranger the impression of insincerity, he was in reality 
an honest man, and conveyed his mind on such matters with 
equal candour and delicacy during the whole of Scott's brill- 
iant career. In the vast majority of instances he found his 
friend acquiesce at once in the propriety of his suggestions ; 
nay, there certainly were cases, though rare, in which his 
advice to alter things of much more consequence than a word 
or a rhyme, was frankly tendered, and on deliberation adopted 
by Scott. Mr. Erskine was the referee whenever the poet 
hesitated about taking the hints of the zealous typographer ; 
and his refined taste and gentle manners rendered his critical 
alliance highly valuable. With two such faithful friends 
within his reach, the author of the Lay might safely dispense 
with sending his MS. to be revised even by George Ellis. 

In the first week of January 1805, The Lay was pub- 
lished ; and its success at once decided that literature should 
form the main business of Scott's life. I shall not mock the 
reader with many words as to the merits of a poem which has 
now kept its place for nearly half a century ; but one or two 
additional remarks on the history of the composition may be 
pardoned. 

It is curious to trace the small beginnings and gradual de- 
velopment of his design. The lovely Countess of Dalkeith 
hears a wild rude legend of Border diablerie, and sportively 
asks him to make it the subject of a ballad. He had been 
already labouring in the elucidation of the " quaint Inglis " 
ascribed to an ancient seer and bard of the same district, and 
perhaps completed his own sequel, intending the whole to be 
included in the third volume of the Minstrelsy. He assents to 
Lady Dalkeith's request, and casts about for some new variety 
of diction and rhyme, which might be adopted without im- 
propriety in a closing strain for the same collection. Sir John 
Stoddart's casual recitation, a year or two before, of Coleridge's 
unpublished Christabel, had fixed the music of that noble frag- 
ment in his memory ; and it occurs to him, that by throwing 
the story of Gilpin Horner into somewhat of a similar cadence, 
he might produce such an echo of the later metrical romance, 
as would serve to connect his Conclusion of the primitive Sir 



122 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Tristrem "with his imitations of the common popular ballad in 
the Grey Brother and Eve of St. John. A single scene of 
feudal festivity in the hall of Branksome, disturbed by some 
pranks of a nondescript goblin, was probably all that he con- 
templated; but his accidental confinement in the midst of a 
volunteer camp gave him leisure to meditate his theme to the 
sound of the bugle ; — and suddenly there flashes on him the 
idea of extending his simple outline, so as to embrace a vivid 
panorama of that old Border life of war and tumult, and all 
earnest passions, with which his researches on the Min- 
strelsy had by degrees fed his imagination, until even the 
minutest feature had been taken home and realised with un- 
conscious intenseness of sympathy ; so that he had won for 
himself in the past, another world, hardly less complete or 
familiar than the present. Erskine or Cranstoun suggests that 
he would do well to divide the poem into cantos, and prefix to 
each of them a motto explanatory of the action, after the fashion 
of Spenser in the Faery Queen. He pauses for a moment — 
and the happiest conception of the framework of a picturesque 
narrative that ever occurred to any poet — one that Homer 
might have envied — the creation of the ancient harper, starts 
to life. By such steps did the Lay of the Last Minstrel grow 
out of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 

A word more of its felicitous machinery. It was at Bow- 
hill that the Countess of Dalkeith requested a ballad on Gilpin 
Horner. The ruined castle of Newark closely adjoins that 
seat, and is now indeed included within its jrteasance. Newark 
had been the chosen residence of the first Duchess of Buccleuch, 
and he accordingly shadows out his own beautiful friend in the 
person of her lord's ancestress, the last of the original stock of 
that great house ; himself the favoured inmate of Bowhill, in- 
troduced certainly to the familiarity of its circle in consequence 
of his devotion to the poetry of a by-past age, in that of an 
aged minstrel, " the last of all the race," seeking shelter at the 
gate of Newark, in days when many an adherent of the fallen 
cause of Stuart, — his own bearded ancestor, icho had fought at 
Killiecrankie, among the rest, — owed their safety to her who 

" In pride of power, in beauty's bloom, 
Had. wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb." 

The arch allusions which run through all these Introductions, 
without in the least interrupting the truth and graceful pathos 
of their main impression, seem to me exquisitely characteristic 



LAY OF THE LAST MIN STEEL. 123 

of Scott, whose delight and pride was to play with the genius 
which nevertheless mastered him at will. For, in truth, what 
is it that gives to all his works their unique and marking charm, 
except the matchless effect which sudden effusions of the pure- 
est heart-blood of nature derive from their being poured out, 
to all appearance involuntarily, amidst diction and sentiment 
cast equally in the mould of the busy world, and the seemingly 
habitual desire to dwell on nothing but what might be likely 
to excite curiosity, without too much disturbing deeper feel- 
ings, in the saloons of polished life ? Such outbursts come 
forth dramatically in all his writings ; but in the interludes 
and passionate parentheses of the Lay of the Last Minstrel we 
have the poet's own inner soul and temperament laid bare and 
throbbing before us. Even here, indeed, he has a mask, and 
he trusts it — but fortunately it is a transparent one. 

Many minor personal allusions have been explained in the 
notes to the last edition of the Lay. It was hardly necessary 
even then to say that the choice of the hero had been dictated 
by the poet's affection for the living descendants of the Baron 
of Cranstoun ; and now — none who have perused the preceding 
pages can doubt that he had dressed out his Margaret of Brank- 
some in the form and features of his own first love. This 
poem may be considered as the " bright consummate flower " in 
which all the dearest dreams of his yputhful fancy had at 
length found expansion for their strength, spirit, tenderness, 
and beauty. 

In the closing lines — 

"Hush'cl is the harp — the Minstrel gone ; 

And did he wander forth alone ? 

No ! — close beneath proud Newark's tower 
Arose the Minstrel's humble bower," &c. 

— in these charming lines he has embodied what was, at the 
time when he penned them, the chief day-dream of Ashestiel. 
Prom the moment that his uncle's death placed a considerable 
sum of ready money at his command, he pleased himself, as 
we have seen, with the idea of buying a mountain farm, and 
becoming not only the "sheriff" (as he had in former days 
delighted to call himself), but "the laird of the cairn and the 
scaur." While he was "labouring doucement at the Lay" (as 
in one of his letters he expresses it), during the recess of 1804, 
circumstances rendered it next to certain that the small estate 
of Broadmeadows, situated just over against the ruins of 
Newark, on the northern bank of the Yarrow, would, soon be 



124 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

exposed to sale ; and many a time did lie ride round it in 
company with Lord and Lady Dalkeith, 

" TThen summer smiled on Sweet Bowhill," 

surveying the beautiful little domain with wistful eyes, and 
anticipating that 

" There would he sing achievement high 
And circumstance of chivalry, 
And Yarrow, as he rolled along, 
Bear burden to the Minstrel's song." 

I consider it as, in one point of view, the greatest misfortune 
of his life that this vision was not realised ; but the success 
of the poem itself changed " the spirit of his dream." The 
favour which it at once attained had not been equalled in the 
case of any one poem of considerable length during at least 
two generations : it certainly had not been approached in the 
case of any narrative poem since the days of Dryden. Before 
it was seat to the press it had received warm commendation 
from the ablest and most influential critic of the time ; but 
when Mr. Jeffrey's reviewal appeared, a month after publi- 
cation, laudatory as its language was, it scarcely came up to 
the opinion which had already taken root in the public mind. 
It, however, quite satisfied the author : and I think it just to 
state, that I have not discovered in any of the letters which he 
received from brother-poets — no, not even in those of Words- 
worth or Campbell — a strain of approbation higher, on 
the whole, than that of the chief professional reviewer of the 
period. When the happy days of youth are over, even the 
most genial and generous of minds are seldom able to enter 
into the strains of a new poet with that full and open delight 
which he awakens in the bosoms of the rising generation about 
him. Their deep and eager sympathies have already been 
drawn upon to an extent of which the prosaic part of the 
species can never have any conception; and when the fit of 
creative inspiration has subsided, they are apt to be rather 
cold critics even of their own noblest appeals to the simple 
primary feelings of their kind. 

"It would be great affectation," says the Introduction of 
1830, " not to own that the author expected some success from 
the Lay of the Last Minstrel. The attempt to return to a 
more simple and natural poetry was likely to be welcomed, at 
a time when the public had become tired of heroic hexameters, 
with all the buckram and binding that belong to them in 



LAY OF THE LAST MINSTBEL. 125 

modern days. But whatever might have been his expectations, 
whether moderate or unreasonable, the result left them far 
behind; for among those who smiled on the adventurous 
minstrel were numbered the great names of William Pitt and 
Charles Fox. Neither was the extent of the sale inferior to 
the character of the judges who received the poem with appro- 
bation. Upwards of 30,000 copies were disposed of by the 
trade ; and the author had to perform a task difficult to human 
vanity, when called upon to make the necessary deductions 
from his own merits, in a calm attempt to account for its 
popularity. " 

Through what channel or in what terms Fox made known 
his opinion of the Lay, I have failed to ascertain. Pitt's praise, 
as expressed to his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, within a few 
weeks after the poem appeared, was repeated by her to William 
Kose, who, of course, communicated it forthwith to the author ; 
and not long after, the Minister, in conversation with Scott's 
early friend William Dundas, signified that it would give him 
pleasure to find some opportunity of advancing the fortunes of 
such a writer. " I remember," writes this gentleman, " at Mr. 
Pitt's table in 1805, the Chancellor asked me about you and 
your then situation, and after I had answered him, Mr. Pitt 
observed — ' He can't remain as he is,' and desired me to i look 
to it.' He then repeated some lines from the Lay, describing 
the old harper's embarrassment when asked to play, and said — 
' This is a sort of thing which I might have expected in painting, 
but could never have fancied capable of being given in poetry.' " 
— It is agreeable to know that this great statesman and accom- 
plished scholar awoke at least once from his supposed apathy 
as to the elegant literature of his own time. 

The poet has under-estimated even the patent and tangible 
evidence of his success. The first edition of the Lay was a 
magnificent quarto, 750 copies ; but this was soon exhausted, 
and there followed one octavo impression after another in close 
succession to the number of fourteen. In fact, some forty-four 
thousand copies had been disposed of in this country, and by 
the legitimate trade alone, before he superintended the edition 
of 1830, to which his biographical introductions were prefixed. 
In the history of British Poetry nothing had ever equalled the 
demand for the Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

The publishers of the first edition were Longman and Co. of 
London, and xVrchibald Constable and Co. of Edinburgh ; which 
last house, however, had but a small share in the adventure. 
The profits were to be divided equally between the author and 



126 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

his publishers ; and Scott's moiety was L.169, 6s. Messrs. 
Longman, when a second edition was called for, offered L.500 
for the copyright ; this was accepted ; but they afterwards, as 
the Introduction says, " added L.100 in their own unsolicited 
kindness. It was handsomely given, to supply the loss of a 
fine horse which broke down suddenly while the author was 
riding with one of the worthy publishers." The author's whole 
"share, then, in the profits of the Lay, came to L.769, 6s. 

Mr. Ballantyne, in his Memorandum, says, that very shortly 
after the publication of the Lay, he found himself obliged to 
apply to Mr. Scott for an advance of money ; his own capital 
being inadequate for the business which had been accumulated 
on his press, in consequence of the reputation it had acquired 
for beauty and correctness of execution. Already, as we have 
seen, the printer had received " a liberal loan ; " — " and now," 
says he, " being compelled, maugre all delicacy, to renew my 
application, he candidly answered that he was not quite sure 
that it would be prudent for him to comply, but in order to 
evince his entire confidence in me, he was willing to make a 
suitable advance to be admitted as a third-sharer of my 
business." No trace has been discovered of any examination 
into the state of the business, on the part of Scott, at this time. 
However, he now embarked in Ballantyne's concern almost the 
whole of the capital which he had a few months before designed 
to invest in the purchase of Broadmeadows. Dis aliter visum. 

I have hinted my suspicion that he had formed some dis- 
tant notion of such an alliance, as early as the date of Ballan- 
tyne's projected removal from Kelso; and his Introduction to 
the Lay, in 1830, appears to leave little doubt that the hope of 
ultimately succeeding at the Bar had waxed very faint, before 
the third volume of the Minstrelsy was brought out in 1803. 
When that hope ultimately vanished altogether, perhaps he 
himself would not have found it easy to tell. The most im- 
portant of men's opinions, views, and projects, are sometimes 
taken up in so very gradual a manner, and after so many 
pauses of hesitation and of inward retractation, that they 
themselves are at a loss to trace in retrospect all the stages 
through which their minds have passed. We see plainly that 
Scott had never been fond of his profession, but that, con- 
scious of his own persevering diligence, he ascribed his scanty 
success in it mainly to the prejudices of the Scotch solicitors 
against employing, in weighty causes at least, any barrister 
supposed to be strongly imbued with the love of literature ; 
instancing the career of his friend Jeffrey as almost the soli- 



PABTNERSHIP WITH BALLANTYNE, 127 

tary instance within his experience of such prejudices being 
entirely overcome. Had Scott, to his strong sense and dexter- 
ous ingenuity, his well-grounded knowledge of the jurispru- 
dence of his country, and his admirable industry, added a 
brisk and ready talent for debate and declamation, I can have 
no doubt that his triumph must have been as complete as Mr. 
Jeffrey's ; nor in truth do I much question that, had one really 
great and interesting case been submitted to his sole manage- 
ment, the result would have been to place his professional char- 
acter for skill and judgment, and variety of resource, on so 
firm a basis, that even his rising celebrity as a man of letters 
could not have seriously disturbed it. Nay, I think it quite 
possible, that had he been intrusted with one such case after 
his reputation was established, and he had been compelled to 
do his abilities some measure of justice in his own secret esti- 
mate, he might have displayed very considerable powers even 
as a forensic speaker. But no opportunities of this engaging 
kind having ever been presented to him — after he had per- 
sisted for more than ten years in sweeping the floor of the 
Parliament House, without meeting with any employment but 
what would have suited the dullest drudge, and seen himself 
termly and yearly more and more distanced by contemporaries 
for whose general capacity he could have had little respect — 
while, at the same time, he already felt his own position in 
the eyes of society at large to have been signally elevated 
in consequence of his extra-professional exertions — it is not 
wonderful that disgust should have gradually gained upon 
him, and that the sudden blaze and tumult of renown which 
surrounded the author of the Lay should have at last deter- 
mined him to concentrate all his ambition on the pursuits 
which had alone brought him distinction. 

We have seen that, before he formed his contract with 
Ballantyne, he was in possession of such a fixed income as 
might have satisfied all his desires, had he not found his 
family increasing rapidly about him. Even as that was, with 
nearly if not quite L.1000 per annum, he might perhaps have 
retired not only from the Bar, but from Edinburgh, and settled 
entirely at Ashestiel or Broadmeadows, without encountering 
what any man of his station and habits ought to have consid- 
ered as an imprudent risk. He had, however, no wish to cut 
himself off from the busy and intelligent society to which he 
had been hitherto accustomed ; and resolved not to leave the 
Bar until he should have at least used his best efforts for ob- 
taining, in addition to his Shrievalty, one of those Clerkships 



128 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

of the Supreme Court, which are usually considered as honour- 
able retirements for advocates who, at a certain standing, give 
up all hopes of reaching the Bench. " I determined," he says, 
"that literature should be my staff but not my crutch, and 
that the profits of my literary labour, however convenient 
otherwise, should not, if I could help it, become necessary to 
my ordinary expenses. Upon such a post an author might 
hope to retreat, without any perceptible alteration of cir- 
cumstances, whenever the time should arrive that the pub- 
lic grew weary of his endeavours to please, or he himself 
should tire of the pen. I possessed so many friends capable 
of assisting me in this object of ambition, that I could hardly 
overrate my own prospects of obtaining the preferment to 
which I limited my wishes ; and, in fact, I obtained, in no 
long period, the reversion of a situation which completely met 
them." * 

The first notice of this affair that occurs in his correspond- 
ence, is in a note of Lord Dalkeith's, February 2, 1805, in 
which his noble friend says — " My father desires me to tell 
you that he has had a communication with Lord Melville 
within these few days, and that he thinks your business in a 
good train, though not certain." I consider it as clear, then, that 
he began his negotiations about a seat at the clerk's table im- 
mediately after the Lay was published ; and this in the strict- 
est connexion with his trading adventure. His design of 
quitting the Bar was divulged, however, to none but those 
immediately necessary to his negotiation with the Govern- 
ment ; and the nature of his alliance with the printing estab- 
lishment remained, I believe, not v only unknown, but for some 
years wholly unsuspected, by any of his daily companions 
except Erskine. 

The forming of this commercial tie was one of the most 
important steps in Scott's life. He continued bound by it 
during twenty years, and its influence on his literary exertions 
and his worldly fortunes was productive of much good and not 
a little evil. Its effects were in truth so mixed and balanced 
during the vicissitudes of a long and vigorous career, that I at 
this moment doubt whether it ought, on the whole, to be con- 
sidered with more of satisfaction or of regret. 

With what zeal he proceeded in advancing the views of the 
new copartnership, his correspondence bears ample evidence. 
The brilliant and captivating genius, now acknowledged uni- 
versally, was soon discovered by the leading booksellers of the 

J Introduction to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, — 1830. 



PARTNERSHIP WITH BALLANTYNE. 129 

time to be united with such abundance of matured information 
in many departments, and, above all, with such indefatigable 
habits, as to mark him out for the most valuable workman they 
could engage for the furtherance of their schemes. He had, 
long before this, cast a shrewd and penetrating eye over the 
field of literary enterprise, and developed in his own mind the 
outlines of many extensive plans, which wanted nothing but 
the command of a sufficient body of able subalterns to be 
carried into execution with splendid success. Such of these as 
he grappled with in his own person were, with rare exceptions, 
carried to a triumphant conclusion; but the alliance with 
Ballantyne soon infected him with the proverbial rashness 
of mere mercantile adventure — while, at the same time, his 
generous feelings for other men of letters, and his char- 
acteristic propensity to overrate their talents, combined to 
hurry him and his friends into a multitude of arrangements, 
the results of which were often extremely embarrassing, and 
ultimately, in the aggregate, all but disastrous. It is an old 
saying, that wherever there is a secret there must be some- 
thing wrong; and dearly did he pay the penalty for the 
mystery in which he had chosen to involve this transaction. 
It was his rule, from the beginning, that whatever he wrote or 
edited must be printed at that press ; and had he catered for 
it only as author and sole editor, all had been well ; but had 
the booksellers known his direct pecuniary interest in keeping 
up and extending the occupation of those types, they would 
have taken into account his lively imagination and sanguine 
temperament, as well as his taste and judgment, and con- 
sidered, far more deliberately than they too often did, his mul- 
tifarious recommendations of new literary schemes, coupled 
though these were with some dim understanding that, if the 
Ballantyne press were employed, his own literary skill would 
be at his friend's disposal for the general superintendence of 
the undertaking. On the other hand, Scott's suggestions were, 
in many cases, perhaps in the majority of them, conveyed 
through Ballantyne, whose habitual deference to his opinion 
induced him to advocate them with enthusiastic zeal ; and the 
printer, who had thus pledged his personal authority for the 
merits of the proposed scheme, must have felt himself com- 
mitted to the bookseller, and could hardly refuse with decency 
to take a certain share of the pecuniary risk, by allowing the 
time and method of his own payment to be regulated according 
to the employer's convenience. Hence, by degrees, was woven 
a web of entanglement from which neither Ballantyne nor his 



130 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

adviser had any means of escape, except only in that indomi- 
table spirit, the mainspring of personal industry altogether 
unparalleled, to which, thus set in motion, the world owes its 
most gigantic monument of literary genius. 

In the very first letter that I have found from Scott to his 
'partner (April 12, 1805), occur suggestions about new editions 
of Thomson, Dryden, and Tacitus, and, moreover, of a general 
edition of the British Poets, in one hundred volumes 8vo, of 
which last he designed to be himself the editor, and expected 
that the booksellers would readily give him 30 guineas per 
volume for his trouble. This gigantic scheme interfered with 
one of the general body of London publishers, and broke down 
accordingly ; but Constable entered with zeal into the plan of 
a Dryden, and Scott without delay busied himself in the col- 
lection of materials for its elucidation. 

Precisely at the time when his poetical ambition had been 
stimulated by the first outburst of universal applause, and 
when he was forming these engagements with Ballantyne, a 
fresh impetus was given to the volunteer mania, by the ap- 
pointment of the Earl of Moira (afterwards Marquis of Hast- 
ings) to the chief military command in the north. The Earl 
had married, the year before, a Scottish Peeress, the Countess 
of Loudon, and entered with great zeal into her sympathy 
with the patriotic enthusiasm of her countrymen. Edinburgh 
was converted into a camp : besides a large garrison of regular 
troops, nearly 10,000 f encibles and volunteers were almost con- 
stantly under arms. The lawyer wore his uniform under his 
gown ; the shopkeeper measured out his wares in scarlet ; in short, 
the citizens of all classes made more use for several months of 
the military than of any other dress ; and the new commander- 
in-chief consulted equally his own gratification and theirs, by 
devising a succession of manoeuvres which presented a vivid 
image of the art of war conducted on a large and scientific 
scale. In the sham battles and sham sieges of 1805, Craig- 
millar, Gilmerton, Braidhills, and other formidable positions 
in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, were the scenes of many a 
dashing assault and resolute defence; and occasionally the 
spirits of the mock combatants — English and Scotch, or Low- 
land and Highland — became so much excited, that there was 
some difficulty in preventing the rough mockery of warfare 
from passing into its realities. The Highlanders, in particu- 
lar, were very hard to be dealt with ; and once, at least, Lord 
Moira was forced to alter at the eleventh hour his programme 
of battle, because a battalion of kilted fencibles could not or 



LITER ABY LABOURS. 131 

would not understand that it was their duty to be beat. Such 
days as these must have been more nobly spirit-stirring than 
even the best specimens of the fox-chase. To the end of his 
life, Scott delighted to recall the details of their counter- 
marches, ambuscades, charges, and pursuits, and in all of these 
his associates of the Light-Horse agree that none figured more 
advantageously than himself. Yet such military interludes 
seem only to have whetted his appetite for closet work. 
Indeed, nothing but a complete publication of his letters could 
give an adequate notion of the facility with which he even at 
this early period combined the conscientious magistrate, the 
martinet quartermaster, the speculative printer, and the ardent 
lover of literature for its own sake. 

In the course of the summer and autumn of 1805, we find 
him in correspondence about another gigantic scheme — an 
uniform series of the Ancient English Chronicles ; and there 
are hints of various minor undertakings in the editorial line. 
In the same year he contributed to Mr. Jeffrey's journal an 
admirable article on Todd's edition of Spenser; another, on 
Godwin's Fleetwood; a third, on the Highland Society's Re- 
port concerning the poems of Ossian; a fourth, on Johnes's 
Translation of Froissart ; a fifth, on Colonel Thornton's Sport- 
ing Tour ; and a sixth, on some cookery books — the two last 
being excellent specimens of his humour. By September, 
meanwhile, he had made considerable progress with his Dry- 
den : for we find him then writing to Ellis : — "I will not cas- 
trate John Dryden. I would as soon castrate my own father, 
as I believe Jupiter did of yore. What would you say to any 
man who would castrate Shakspeare, or Massinger, or Beau- 
mont and Fletcher? I don't say but that it may be very 
proper to select correct passages for the use of boarding schools 
and colleges, being sensible no improper ideas can be suggested 
in these seminaries, unless they are intruded or smuggled 
under the beards and ruffs of our old dramatists. But in 
making an edition of a man of genius's works for libraries 
and collections, and such I conceive a complete edition of Dry- 
den to be, I must give my author as I find him, and will not 
tear out the page, even to get rid of the blot, little as I like it. 
Are not the pages of Swift, and even of Pope, larded with 
indecency, and often of the most disgusting kind ? and do we 
not see them upon all shelves and dressing-tables, and in all 
boudoirs ? Is not Prior the most indecent of tale-tellers, not 
even excepting La Fontaine ? and how often do we see his 
works in female hands ? In fact, it is not passages of ludi- 



132 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

crous indelicacy that corrupt the manners of a people — it is 
the sonnets which a prurient genius like Master Little sings 
virginibus puerisque — it is the sentimental slang, half lewd, 
half methodistic, that debauches the understanding, inflames 
the sleeping passions, and prepares the reader to give way as 
soon as a tempter appears. At the same time, I am not at all 
happy when I peruse some of Dryden's comedies : they are 
very stupid, as well as indelicate ; — sometimes, however, there 
is a considerable vein of liveliness and humour, and all of them 
present extraordinary pictures of the age in which he lived. 
My critical notes will not be very numerous, but I hope to 
illustrate the political poems, as Absalom and Achitophel, the 
Hind and Panther, &c, with some curious annotations. I 
have already made a complete search among some hundred 
pamphlets of that pamphlet-writing age, and with considerable 
success, as I have found several which throw light on my 
author." 

But there is yet another important item to be included in 
the list of his literary labours of this year. The General 
Preface to his Novels informs us, that " about 1805 " he wrote 
the opening chapters of Waverley ; and the second title, 'Tis 
Sixty Years Since, selected, as he says, " that the actual date 
of publication might correspond with the period in which the 
scene was laid," leaves no doubt that he had begun the work 
so early in 1805 as to contemplate publishing it before Christ- 
mas. 1 He adds, in the same page, that he was induced, by the 
favourable reception of the Lady of the Lake, to think of giv- 
ing some of his recollections of Highland scenery and customs 
in prose ; but this is only one instance of the inaccuracy as to 
matters of date which pervades all those delightful Prefaces. 
The Lady of the Lake was not published until five years after 
the first chapters of Waverley were written ; its success, there- 
fore, could have had no share in suggesting the original design 
of a Highland novel, though no doubt it principally influenced 
him to take up that design after it had been long suspended, 
and almost forgotten. 

" Having proceeded," he says, " as far as I think the seventh 
chapter, I shewed my work to a critical friend, whose opinion 
was unfavourable ; and having then some poetical reputation, 
I was unwilling to risk the loss of it by attempting a new style 
of composition. I, therefore, then threw aside the work I had 

1 I have ascertained, since this page was written, that a small part of 
the MS. of Waverley is on paper bearing the watermark of 1805 — the 
rest on paper of 1813. 



LITERARY LABOURS. 133 

commenced, without either reluctance or remonstrance. I 
ought to add, that though my ingenuous friend's sentence was 
afterwards reversed, on an appeal to the public, it cannot be 
considered as any imputation on his good taste ; for the speci- 
men subjected to his criticism did not extend beyond the 
departure of the hero for Scotland, and consequently had not 
entered upon the part of the story which was finally found 
most interesting." It is, I think, evident from a letter of 1810, 
that the first critic of the opening chapters of Waverley was 
William Erskine. 

His correspondence shews how largely he was exerting him- 
self all this while in the service of authors less fortunate than 
himself. James Hogg, among others, continued to occupy from 
time to time his attention ; and he assisted regularly and assid- 
uously throughout this and the succeeding year Mr. Eobert 
Jamieson, an industrious and intelligent antiquary, who had 
engaged in editing a collection of ancient popular ballads 
before the third volume of the Minstrelsy appeared, and who 
at length published his very curious work in 1807. Mean- 
time, Ashestiel, in place of being less resorted to by literary 
strangers than Lass wade cottage had been, shared abundantly 
in the fresh attractions of the Lay, and " booksellers in the 
plural number " were preceded and followed by an endless 
variety of tourists, whose main temptation from the south had 
been the hope of seeing the Borders in company with their 
Minstrel. One of this year's guests was Mr. Southey — their 
first meeting, the commencement of much kind intercourse. 
Scott still writes of himself as " idling away his hours ; " he 
had already learned to appear as if he were doing so to all 
who had no particular right to confidence respecting the de- 
tails of his privacy. 

Mr. Skene arrived just after a great storm and flood in 
August; he says in his Memoranda — "The ford of Ashestiel 
was never a good one, and for some time after this it remained 
not a little perilous. Scott was himself the first to attempt 
the passage on his favourite black horse Captain, who had 
scarcely entered the river when he plunged beyond his depth, 
and had to swim to the other side with his burden. It requires 
a good horseman to swim a deep and rapid stream, but he 
trusted to the vigour of his steady trooper, and in spite of his 
lameness kept his seat manfully." 

Mr. Skene soon discovered a change which had recently 
been made in his friend's distribution of his time. Previously 
it had been his custom, whenever professional business or social 



134 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

engagements occnpied the middle part of his day, to seize 
some honrs for study after he was supposed to have retired 
to bed. His physician suggested that this was very likely 
to aggravate his nervous headaches, the only malady he was 
subject to in the prime of his manhood; and, contemplating 
with steady eye a course not only of unremitting but of increas- 
ing industry, he resolved to reverse his plan. In short he had 
now adopted the habits in which, with slender variation, he ever 
after persevered when in the country. He rose by five o'clock, 
lit his own fire when the season required one, and shaved and 
dressed with great deliberation — for he was a very martinet 
as to all but the mere coxcombries of the toilet, not abhorring 
effeminate dandyism itself so cordially as the slightest ap- 
proach to personal slovenliness, or even those " bed-gown and 
slipper tricks," as he called them, in which literary men are 
so apt to indulge. Clad in his shooting-jacket, or whatever 
dress he meant to use till dinner time, he was seated at his 
desk by six o'clock, all his papers arranged before him in the 
most accurate order, and his books of reference marshalled 
around him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog lay 
watching his eye, just beyond the line of circumvallation. 
Thus, by the time the family assembled for breakfast between 
nine and ten, he had done enough (in his own language) " to 
break the neck of the day's work" After breakfast, a couple 
of hours more were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he 
was, as he used to say, " his own man." When the weather 
was bad, he would labour incessantly all the morning ; but the 
general rule was to be out and on horseback by one o'clock at 
the latest ; while, if any more distant excursion had been pro- 
posed over night, he was ready to start on it by ten ; his 
occasional rainy days of unintermitted study forming, as he 
said, a fund in his favour, out of which he was entitled to 
draw for accommodation whenever the sun shone with special 
brightness. 

It was another rule, that every letter he received should be 
answered that same day. Nothing else could have enabled 
him to keep abreast with the flood of communications that in 
the sequel put his good nature to the severest test — but 
already the demands on him in this way also were numer- 
ous ; and he included attention to them among the necessary 
business which must be despatched before he had a right to 
close his writing-box, or as he phrased it, " to say, out damned 
spot, and be a gentleman." In turning over his enormous 
mass of correspondence, I have almost invariably found some 



HIS PETS. 135 

indication that, when a letter had remained more than a day 
or two unanswered, it was because he found occasion for 
inquiry. 

I ought not to omit, that in those days Scott was far too 
zealous a dragoon not to take a principal share in the stable 
duty. Before beginning his desk-work in the morning, he 
uniformly visited his favourite steed, and neither Captain nor 
Lieutenant nor Brown Adam (so called after one of the heroes 
of the Minstrelsy), liked to be fed except by him. The latter 
charger was indeed altogether intractable in other hands, 
though in his the most submissive of faithful allies. The 
moment he was bridled and saddled, it was the custom to open 
the stable door as a signal that his master expected him, when 
he immediately trotted to the side of the leaping-on-stone, of 
which Scott from his lameness found it convenient to make 
use, and stood there, silent and motionless as a rock, until 
he was fairly in his seat, after which he displayed his joy by 
neighing triumphantly through a brilliant succession of curvet- 
ings. Brown Adam never suffered himself to be backed but 
by his master. He broke, I believe, one groom's arm and 
another's leg in the rash attempt to tamper with his dignity. 

Camp was at this time the constant parlour dog. He was 
very handsome, very intelligent, and naturally very fierce, but 
gentle as a lamb among the children. As for a brace of 
lighter pets, styled Douglas and Percy, he kept one window 
of his study open, whatever might be the state of the weather, 
that they might leap out and in as the fancy moved them. 
He always talked to Camp as if he understood what was said — 
and the animal certainly did understand not a little of it ; in 
particular, it seemed as if he perfectly comprehended on all 
occasions that his master considered him as a sensible and 
steady friend — the greyhounds as volatile young creatures 
whose freaks must be borne with. 

" Every day," says Mr. Skene, " we had some hours of 
coursing with the greyhounds, or riding at random over the 
hills, or of spearing salmon in the Tweed by sunlight : which 
last sport, moreover, we often renewed at night by the help of 
torches. This amusement of burning the icater, as it is called, 
was not withoufsome hazard ; for the large salmon generally 
lie in the pools, the depths of which it is not easy to estimate 
with precision by torchlight, — so that not unf requently, when 
the sportsman makes a determined thrust at a fish apparently 
within reach, his eye has grossly deceived him, and instead of 
the point of the weapon encountering the prey, he finds him- 



136 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

self launched with corresponding vehemence heels over head 
into the pool, both spear and salmon gone, the torch thrown 
out by the concussion of the boat, and quenched in the stream, 
while the boat itself has of course receded to some distance. 
I remember the first time I accompanied our friend, he went 
right over the gunwale in this manner, and had I not acciden- 
tally been at his side, and made a successful grasp at the skirt 
of his jacket as he plunged overboard, he must at least have 
had an awkward dive for it. Such are the contingencies of 
burning the water. The pleasures consist in being penetrated 
with cold and wet, having your shins broken against the stones 
in the dark, and perhaps mastering one fish out of every twenty 
you take aim at." 

In all these amusements, but particularly in the burning of 
the water, Scott's most regular companion at this time was John 
Lord Somerville, who united with higher qualities an enthu- 
siastic love for such sports, and consummate address in them. 
This amiable nobleman then passed his autumns at Alwyn, 
some eight or nine miles below Ashestiel. They interchanged 
visits almost every week; and Scott profited largely by his 
friend's known skill in every department of rural economy. 
He always talked of him as his master in the art of planting. 

The laird of Kubislaw seldom failed to spend a part of the 
autumn at Ashestiel, as long as Scott remained there ; and dur- 
ing these visits they often gave a wider scope to their expedi- 
tions. " Indeed," says Mr. Skene, " there are few scenes at all 
celebrated either in the history, tradition, or romance of the 
Border counties, which we did not explore together in the course 
of our rambles. We traversed the entire vales of the Yarrow 
and Ettrick, with all their sweet tributary glens, and never 
failed to find a hearty welcome from the farmers at whose houses 
we stopped, either for dinner or for the night. He was their 
chief -magistrate, extremely popular in that official capacity; 
and nothing could be more gratifying than the frank and hearty 
reception which everywhere greeted our arrival, however unex- 
pected. The exhilarating air of the mountains, and the healthy 
exercise of the day, secured our relishing homely fare, and we 
found inexhaustible entertainment in the varied display of char- 
acter which the affability of the Sheriff drew forth on all occa- 
sions in genuine breadth and purity. The beauty of the scenery 
gave full employment to my pencil, with the free and frequent 
exercise of which he never seemed to feel impatient. He was 
at all times ready and willing to alight when any object attracted 
my notice, and used to seat himself beside me on the brae, to 



EXCURSIONS. 137 

con over some ballad appropriate to the occasion, or narrate the 
tradition of the glen — sometimes, perhaps, to note a passing 
idea in his pocket-book ; but this was rare, for in general he 
relied with confidence on the great storehouse of his memory. 

" One of our earliest expeditions was to visit the wild scenery 
of the mountainous tract above Moffat, including the cascade 
of the Grey Mare's Tail, and the dark tarn called Loch Skene. 
In our ascent to the lake we got completely bewildered in the 
thick fog which generally envelopes the rugged features of that 
lonely region; and, as we were groping through the maze of 
bogs, the ground gave way, and down went horse and horsemen 
pell-mell into a slough of peaty mud and black water, out of 
which, entangled as we were with our plaids and floundering 
nags, it was no easy matter to get extricated. Indeed, unless 
we had prudently left our gallant steeds at a farm-house below, 
and borrowed hill-ponies for the occasion, the result might have 
been worse than laughable. As it Avas, we rose like the spirits 
of the bog, covered cap-drpie with slime, to free themselves 
from which, our wily ponies took to rolling about on the heather, 
and we had nothing for it but following their example. At 
length, as we approached the gloomy loch, a huge eagle heaved 
himself from the margin and rose right over us, screaming his 
scorn of the intruders ; and altogether it would be impossible 
to picture anything more desolately savage than the scene which 
opened, as if raised by enchantment on purpose to gratify the 
poet's eye ; thick folds of fog rolling incessantly over the face 
of the inky waters, but rent asunder now in one direction, and 
then in another — so as to afford us a glimpse of some projecting 
rock or naked point of land, or island bearing a few scraggy 
stumps of pine — and then closing again in universal darkness 
upon the cheerless waste. Much of the scenery of Old Mortal- 
ity was drawn from that day's ride. It was also in the course 
of this excursion that we encountered that amusing personage 
introduced into Guy Mannering as ' Tod Gabbie.' He was one 
of those itinerants who gain a subsistence among the moor- 
land farmers by. relieving them of foxes, polecats, and the 
like depredators — a half-witted, stuttering, and most original 
creature. 

" Having explored all the wonders of Moff atdale, we turned 
ourselves towards Blackhouse Tower, to visit Scott's worthy 
acquaintances the Laidlaws, and reached it after a long and 
intricate ride, having been again led off our course by the grey- 
hounds, who had been seduced by a strange dog that joined 
company to engage in full pursuit upon the tract of what we 



138 LIFE OF SIR WALTEB SCOTT. 

presume to be either a fox or a roe-deer. The chase was pro- 
tracted and perplexing, from the mist that skirted the hill-tops ; 
but at length we reached the scene of slaughter, and were much 
distressed to find that a stately old he-goat had been the victim. 
He seemed to have fought a stout battle for his life, but now 
lay mangled in the midst of his panting enemies, who betrayed, 
on our approach, strong consciousness of delinquency and ap- 
prehension of the lash, which was administered accordingly 
to soothe the manes of the luckless Capricorn — though, after 
all, the dogs were not so much to blame in mistaking his game 
flavour, since the fogs must have kept him out of view till the 
last moment. Our visit to Blackhouse was highly interesting ; 
the excellent old tenant being still in life, and the whole family 
group presenting a perfect picture of innocent and simple happi- 
ness, while the animated, intelligent, and original conversation 
of our friend William was quite charming. 

" Sir Adam Fergusson and the Ettrick Shepherd were of the 
party that explored Loch Skene and hunted the unfortunate 
he-goat. 

" I need not tell you that Saint Mary's Loch, and the Loch 
of the Lowes, were among the most favourite scenes of our 
excursions, as his fondness for them continued to his last days, 
and we have both visited them many times together in his com- 
pany. I may say the same of the Teviot and the Aill, Borth- 
wick water, and the lonely towers of Buccleuch and Harden, 
Minto, Roxburgh, Gilnockie, &c. I think it was either in 1805 
or 1806 that I first explored the Borthwick with him, when on 
our way to pass a week at Langholm with Lord and Lady Dal- 
keith, upon which occasion the otter-hunt, so well described in 
Guy Mannering, was got up by our noble host ; and I can never 
forget the delight with which Scott observed the enthusiasm of 
the high-spirited yeomen, who had assembled in multitudes to 
partake the sport of their dear young chief, well mounted, and 
dashing about from rock to rock with a reckless ardour which 
recalled the alacrity of their forefathers in following the Buc- 
cleuchs of former days through adventures of a more serious 
order. 

" Whatever the banks of the Tweed, from its source to its 
termination, presented of interest, we frequently visited ; and 
I do verily believe there is not a single ford in the whole 
course of that river which we have not traversed together. He 
had an amazing fondness for fords, and was not a little advent- 
urous in plunging through, whatever might be the state of the 
flood, and this even though there happened to be a bridge in 



EXCURSIONS. 139 

view. If it seemed possible to scramble through, he scorned to 
go ten yards about, and in fact preferred the ford ; and it is to 
be remarked, that most of the heroes of his tales seem to have 
been endued with similar propensities — even the White Lady 
of Avenel delights in the ford. He sometimes even attempted 
them on foot, though his lameness interfered considerably with 
his progress among the slippery stones. Upon one occasion of 
this sort I was assisting him through the Ettrick, and we had 
both got upon the same tottering stone in the middle of the 
stream, when some story about a kelpie occurring to him, he must 
needs stop and tell it with all his usual vivacity — and then 
laughing heartily at his own joke, he slipped his foot, or the 
stone shuffled beneath him, and down he went headlong into 
the pool, pulling me after him. We escaped, however, with 
no worse than a thorough drenching and the loss of his stick, 
which floated down the river, and he was as ready as ever for a 
similar exploit before his clothes were half dried upon his back." 

About this time Mr. and Mrs. Scott made a short excursion 
to the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and visited 
some of their finest scenery, in company with Mr. Wordsworth. 
I have found no written narrative of this little tour, but I have 
often heard Scott speak with enthusiastic delight of the recep- 
tion he met with in the humble cottage which his brother poet 
then inhabited on the banks of Grasmere ; and at least one of 
the days they spent together was destined to furnish a theme 
for the verse of each, namely, that which they gave to the 
ascent of Helvellyn, where, in the course of the preceding 
spring, a young gentleman having lost his way and perished 
by falling over a precipice, his remains were discovered, three 
months afterwards, still watched by " a faithful terrier-bitch, 
his constant attendant during frequent rambles among the 
wilds." 1 This day they were accompanied by an illustrious 
philosopher, who was also a true poet — and might have been 
one of the greatest of poets had he chosen ; and I have heard Mr. 
Wordsworth say, that it would be difficult to express the feel- 
ings with which he, who so often had climbed Helvellyn alone, 
found himself standing on its summit with two such men as 
Scott and Davy. 

After leaving Mr. Wordsworth, Scott carried his wife to 
spend a few days at Gilsland, among the scenes where they had 
first met ; and his reception by the company at the wells was 
such as to make him look back with something of regret, as 

1 See Poetical Works, edit. 1841, p. 629 ; and compare Wordsworth — 
8vo edit. vol. iii. p. 96. 



140 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

well as of satisfaction, to the change that had occurred in his 
circumstances since 1797. They were, however, enjoying them- 
selves much there, when he received intelligence which induced 
him to believe that a French force was about to land in Scot- 
land : — the alarm indeed had spread far and wide ; and a 
mighty gathering of volunteers, horse and foot, from the Lo- 
thians and the Border country, took place in consequence at 
Dalkeith. He was not slow to obey the summons. He had 
luckily chosen to accompany on horseback the carriage in which 
Mrs. Scott travelled. His good steed carried him to the spot of 
rendezvous, full a hundred miles from Gilsland, within twenty- 
four hours ; and on reaching it, though no doubt to his disap- 
pointment the alarm had already blown over, he was delighted 
with the general enthusiasm that had thus been put to the test 
— and, above all, by the rapidity with which the yeomen of 
Ettrick Forest had poured down from their glens, under the 
guidance of his good friend and neighbour, Mr. Pringle of Tor- 
woodlee. These fine fellows were quartered along with the 
Edinburgh troop when he reached Dalkeith and Musselburgh ; 
and after some sham battling, and a few evenings of high jol- 
lity had crowned the needless muster of the beacon-fires, he 
immediately turned his horse again towards the south, and 
rejoined Mrs. Scott at Carlisle. 1 

By the way, it was during his fiery ride from Gilsland to 
Dalkeith, on the occasion above mentioned, that he composed 
his Bard's Incantation : — 

' ' The forest of Glenuiore is drear, 
It is all of black pine and the dark oak-tree," &c. — 

and the verses bear the full stamp of the feelings of the 
moment. 

Meantime, the affair of the Clerkship, opened nine or ten 
months before, had not been neglected by the friends on whose 
counsel and assistance Scott had relied. Whether Mr. Pitt's 
hint to Mr. William Dundas, that he would willingly find an 
opportunity to promote the interests of the author of the Lay, 
or some conversation between the Duke of Buccleuch and Lord 
Melville, first encouraged him to this direction of his views, I 
am not able to state distinctly ; but I believe that the desire 
to see his fortunes placed on some more substantial basis, was 
at this time partaken pretty equally by the three persons who 
had the principal influence in the distribution of the crown 

1 See Note, "Alarm of Invasion," Antiquary, vol. ii. p. 338. 



VISIT TO LONDON. 141 

patronage in Scotland ; and as his object was rather to secure 
a future than an immediate increase of official income, it was 
comparatively easy to make such an arrangement as would sat- 
isfy his ambition. George Home of Wedderburn, an old friend 
of his family, had now held a Clerkship for upwards of thirty 
years. In those days there was no system of retiring pensions 
for the worn-out functionary of this class, and the usual method 
was, either that he should resign in favour of a successor who 
advanced a sum of money according to the circumstances of 
his age and health, or for a coadjutor to be associated with 
him in his patent, who undertook the duty on condition of a 
division of salary. Scott offered to relieve Mr. Home of all 
the labours of his office, and to allow him, nevertheless, to 
retain its emoluments entire; and the aged clerk of course 
joined his exertions to procure a conjoint-patent on these very 
advantageous terms. About the close of 1805, a new patent 
was drawn out accordingly ; but, by a clerical inadvertency, it 
was drawn out solely in Scott's favour, no mention of Mr. 
Home being inserted in the instrument. Although, therefore, 
the sign-manual had been affixed, and there remained nothing 
but to pay the fees and take out the commission, Scott, on dis- 
covering this error, could not proceed in the business ; since, 
in the event of his dying before Mr. Home, that gentleman 
would have lost the vested interest which he had stipulated to 
retain. A pending charge of pecuniary corruption had com- 
pelled Lord Melville to retire from office some time before Mr. 
Pitt's death (January 23, 1806) ; and the cloud of popular 
obloquy under which he now laboured, rendered it impossible 
that Scott should expect assistance from the quarter to which, 
under any other circumstances, he would naturally have turned 
for extrication from this difficulty. He therefore, as soon as 
the Fox and G-renville cabinet had been nominated, proceeded 
to London, to make in his own person such representations as 
might be necessary to secure the issuing of the patent in the 
right shape. 

It seems wonderful that he should ever have doubted for a 
single moment of the result ; since, had the new Cabinet been 
purely Whig, and had he been the most violent and obnoxious 
of Tory partisans, neither of which was the case, the arrange- 
ment had been not only virtually, but, with the exception of an 
evident official blunder, formally completed ; and no Secretary 
of State, as I must think, could have refused to rectify the 
paltry mistake in question, without a dereliction of every prin- 
ciple of honour. At this period, however, Scott had by no 



142 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

means measured either the character, the feelings, or the 
arrangements of great public functionaries, by the standard 
with which observation and experience subsequently furnished 
him. He had breathed hitherto, as far as political questions 
of all sorts were concerned, the hot atmosphere of a very nar- 
row scene — and seems (from his letters) to have pictured to 
himself Whitehall and Downing Street as only a wider stage 
for the exhibition of the bitter and fanatical prejudices that 
tormented the petty circles of the Parliament House at Edin- 
burgh ; the true bearing and scope of which no man in after 
days more thoroughly understood, or more sincerely pitied. 
The seals of the Home Office had been placed in the hands of 
a nobleman of the highest character — moreover, an ardent 
lover of literature ; — while the chief of the new Ministry was 
one of the most generous as well as tasteful of mankind; and 
there occurred no hesitation whatever on their parts. In com- 
municating his success to the Earl of Dalkeith, whose warm 
personal kindness, without doubt, had first animated in his 
favour both the Duke of Buccleuch and Lord Melville, he says 
(London, February 11) : — " Lord Spencer, upon the nature of 
the transaction being explained in an audience with which he 
favoured me, was pleased to direct the commission to be issued, 
as an act of justice, regretting, he said, it had not been from 
the beginning his own deed. This was doing the thing hand- 
somely, and like an English nobleman. I have been very much 
feted and caressed here, almost indeed to suffocation, but have 
been made amends by meeting some old friends. . . . After 
all, a little literary reputation is of some use here. I suppose 
Solomon, when he compared a good name to a pot of ointment, 
meant that it oiled the hinges of the hall-doors into which the 
possessors of that inestimable treasure wished to penetrate. 
What a good name was in Jerusalem, a known name seems to 
be in London. If you are celebrated for writing verses or for 
slicing cucumbers, for being two feet taller or two feet less 
than any other biped, for acting plays when you should be 
whipped at school, or for attending schools and institutions 
when you should be preparing for your grave, — your notoriety 
becomes a talisman — an ' Open Sesame ' before which every- 
thing gives way — till you are voted a bore, and discarded for 
a new plaything. As this is a consummation of notoriety which 
I am by no means ambitious of experiencing, I hope I shall be 
very soon able to shape my course northward, to enjoy my 
good fortune at my leisure and snap my fingers at the Bar and 
all its works. ... I dine to-day at Holland-house ; I refused 



VISIT TO LONDON. 143 

to go before, lest it should be thought I was soliciting interest 
in that quarter, as I abhor even the shadow of changing or 
turning with the tide." He says elsewhere, — "I never saw 
Mr. Fox on this or any other occasion, and never made any 
application to him, conceiving, that in doing so, I might have 
been supposed to express political opinions different from those 
which I had always professed. In his private capacity, there 
is no man to whom I would have been more proud to owe an 
obligation — had I been so distinguished." 1 

Among other eminent men wuth whom he on this occa- 
sion first made acquaintance, were Ellis's bosom friends, Frere 
and Canning ; wuth the latter of whom his intercourse became 
afterwards close and confidential. It was now also that he 
first saw Joanna Baillie, of whose Plays on the Passions he 
had been, from their first appearance, an enthusiastic admirer. 
The late Mr. Sotheby, the translator of Oberon, &c. &c, was 
the friend who introduced him to the poetess of Hampstead. 
Being asked in 1836 what impression he made upon her at this 
interview — "I was at first," she answered, "a little disap- 
pointed, for I was fresh from the Lay, and had pictured to 
myself an ideal elegance and refinement of f eature ; but I said 
to myself, If I had been in a crowd, and at a loss what to do, 
I should have fixed upon that face among a thousand, as the 
sure index of the benevolence and the shrewdness that would 
and could help me in my strait. We had not talked long, how- 
ever, before I saw T in the expressive play of his countenance far 
more even of elegance and refinement than I had missed in its 
mere lines." The acquaintance thus begun, soon ripened into 
a most affectionate intimacy; and thenceforth Mrs. Joanna 
and her distinguished brother, Dr. Matthew Baillie, were 
among the friends to whose society Scott looked forward with 
the greatest pleasure when about to visit the metropolis. I 
ought to have mentioned before that he had known Mr. Sotheby 
at a very early period of life, — that amiable and excellent 
man having been stationed for some time at Edinburgh while 
serving his Majesty as a captain of dragoons. Scott ever 
retained for him a sincere regard; he was always, when in 
London, a frequent guest at his hospitable board, and owed to 
him the personal acquaintance of not a few of their most emi- 
nent contemporaries. 

Caroline, Princess of Wales, was in those days considered 
among the Tories, whose politics her husband had uniformly 
opposed, as the victim of unmerited misfortune, cast aside, 

1 Introduction to Marmion, 1830. 



144 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

from the more wantonness of caprice, by a gay and dissolute 
voluptuary ; while the Prince's Whig associates had espoused 
his quarrel, and were already, as the event shewed, prepared 
to act, publicly as well as privately, as if they believed her to 
be among the most abandoned of her sex. I know not by 
whom Scott was first introduced to her little Court at Black- 
heath ; but I think it was probably through Mrs. Hayman, a 
lady of her bedchamber, several of whose notes and letters 
occur about this time in the collection of his correspondence. 
The careless levity of the Princess's manner was observed by 
him, I have heard him say, with much regret, as likely to 
bring the purity of heart and mind, for which he gave her 
credit, into suspicion. For example, when, in the course of 
the evening, she conducted him by himself to admire some 
flowers in a conservatory, and, the place being rather dark, 
his lameness occasioned him to hesitate for a moment in 
following her down some steps which she had taken at a skip, 
she turned round, and said, with mock indignation, " Ah ! 
false and faint-hearted troubadour ! you will not trust your- 
self with me for fear of your neck ! " 

I find from one of Mrs. Hayman's letters, that on being 
asked, at Montague House, to recite some verses of his own, 
he replied that he had none unpublished which he thought 
worthy of her Royal Highness's attention, but introduced a 
short account of the Ettrick Shepherd, and repeated one of 
the ballads of the Mountain Bard, for which he was then 
endeavouring to procure subscribers. The Princess appears 
to have been interested by the story, and she affected, at all 
events, to be pleased with the lines; she desired that her 
name might be placed on the Shepherd's list, and thus he had 
at least one gleam of royal patronage. 

I shall not dwell at present upon Scott's method of conduct 
in the circumstances of an eminently popular author be- 
leaguered by the importunities of fashionable admirers. His 
bearing when first exposed to such influences was exactly 
what it was to the end, and I shall have occasion in the sequel 
to produce the evidence of more than one deliberate observer. 

His nomination as Clerk of Session appeared in the Gazette 
(March 8, 1806) which announced the instalment of the Hon. 
Henry Erskine and John Clerk of Eldin as Lord Advocate 
and Solicitor-General for Scotland. The promotion at such 
a moment, of a distinguished Tory, might well excite the 
wonder of the Parliament House, and even when the circum- 
stances were explained, the inferior local adherents of the 



CLERK OF SESSION. 145 

triumphant cause were far from considering the conduct of 
their superiors in this matter with feelings of satisfaction. 
The indication of such humours was deeply resented by his 
haughty spirit; and he in his turn shewed his irritation in 
a manner well calculated to extend to higher quarters the 
spleen with which his advancement had been regarded by 
persons unworthy of his attention. In short, it was almost 
immediately after a Whig Ministry had gazetted his appoint- 
ment to an office which had for twelve months formed a prin- 
cipal object of his ambition, that, rebelling against the implied 
suspicion of his having accepted something like a personal 
obligation at the hands of adverse politicians, he for the first 
time put himself forward as a decided Tory partisan. 

The impeachment of Lord Melville was among the first meas- 
ures of the new Government; and personal affection and grati- 
tude graced as well as heightened the zeal with which Scott 
watched the issue of this, in his eyes, vindictive proceeding ; 
but, though the ex-minister's ultimate acquittal was, as to all 
the charges involving his personal honour, complete, it must 
now be allowed that the investigation brought out many cir- 
cumstances by no means creditable to his discretion ; and the 
rejoicings of his friends ought not, therefore, to have been 
scornfully jubilant. Such they were, however — at least in 
Edinburgh ; and Scott took his share in them by inditing a 
song, which was sung by James Ballantyne, and received with 
clamorous applauses, at a public dinner given in honour of the 
event on the 27th of June 1806. 1 

1 The reader may turn to this song in the later editions of Scott's 
Poetical Works. Mr. W. Savage Landor, a man of great learning and 
great abilities, has in a recent collective edition of his writings reproduced 
many uncharitable judgments on distinguished contemporaries, which 
the reflection of advanced life might have been expected to cancel. Sir 
Walter Scott has his full share in these, but he suffers in good company. 
I must, however, notice the distinct assertion (vol. i. p. 339), that Scott 
"composed and sung a triumphal song on the death of a minister whom, 
in his lifetime, he had flattered, and who was just in his coffin when the 
minstrel sang the fox is run to earth. Constable of Edinburgh heard him, 
and related the fact to Curran, who expressed his incredulity with great 
vehemence, and his abhorrence was greater than his incredulity." The 
only possible foundation on which this story can have been built is the 
occurrence in one stanza of the song mentioned in my text of the words, 
Taily-ho to the fox. That song was written and sung in June 1806. Mr. 
Fox was then minister, and died in September 1806. The lines which Mr. 
Landor speaks of as " flattering Fox during his lifetime," are very cele- 
brated lines : they appeared in the epistle prefixed to the first canto of 
Marmion, which was published in February 1808, and their subject is the 
juxtaposition of the tombs of Pitt and Fox in Westminster Abbey. Every- 



146 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

But enough of this. Scott's Tory feelings certainly appear 
to have been kept in a very excited state during the whole of 
that short reign of the Whigs. He then, for the first time, 
mingled keenly in the details of county politics, — canvassed 
electors — harangued meetings ; and, in a word, made himself 
conspicuous as a leading instrument of his party — more espe- 
cially as an indefatigable local manager, wherever the parlia- 
mentary interest of the Buccleuch family was in peril. But he 
was, in truth, earnest and serious in his belief that the new 
rulers of the country were disposed to abolish many of its most 
valuable institutions ; and he regarded with special jealousy 
certain schemes of innovation with respect to the courts of law 
and the administration of justice, which were set on foot by the 
Crown officers for Scotland. At a debate of the Faculty of 
Advocates on some of these propositions, he made a speech 
much longer than any he had ever before delivered in that as- 
sembly ; and several who heard it have assured me, that it had 
a flow and energy of eloquence for which those who knew him 
best had been quite unprepared. When the meeting broke up, 
he walked across the Mound, on his way to Castle Street, be- 
tween Mr. Jeffrey and another of his reforming friends, who 
complimented him on the rhetorical powers he had been dis- 
playing, and would willingly have treated the subject-matter of 
the discussion playfully. But his feelings had been moved to 
an extent far beyond their apprehension: he exclaimed, "No, 
no — 'tis no laughing matter; little by little, whatever your 
wishes may be, you will destroy and undermine, until nothing 
of what makes Scotland Scotland shall remain." And so say- 
ing, he turned round to conceal his agitation — but not before 
Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing down his cheek — resting 
his head until he recovered himself on the wall of the Mound. 
Seldom, if ever, in his more advanced age, did any feelings 
obtain such mastery. 

Before any of these scenes occurred he had entered upon his 
duties as Clerk of Session ; and as he continued to discharge 
them with exemplary regularity, and to the entire satisfaction 
both of the Judges and the Bar, during the long period of 

body who knew Scott knows that he never sang a song in his life ; and if 
that had not been notorious, who but Mr. Landor could have heard with- 
out " incredulity," that he sang a triumphal song on the death of Fox in 
the presence of the publisher of Marmion and proprietor of the Edinburgh 
Eeview ? I may add, though it is needless, that Constable's son-in-law 
and partner, Mr. Cadell, "never heard of such a song as that described 
by Mr. Landor." 



CLERK OF SESSION. 147 

twenty -five years, I think it proper to tell precisely in what 
they consisted. 

The Court of Session sat, in his time, from the 12th of May 
to the 12th of July, and again from the 12th of November, 
with a short interval at Christmas, to the 12th of March. The 
Judges of the Inner Court took their places on the Bench, every 
morning not later than ten o'clock, and remained according to 
the amount of business ready for despatch, but seldom for less 
than four or more than six hours daily ; during which space the 
Principal Clerks continued seated at a table below the Bench, 
to watch the progress of the suits, and record the decisions — 
the cases of all classes being equally apportioned among their 
number. The Court of Session, however, does not sit on Mon- 
day, that day being reserved for the criminal business of the 
High Court of Justiciary, and there is also another blank day 
every other week, — the Teind Wednesday, as it is called, when 
the Judges are assembled for the hearing of tithe questions, 
which belong to a separate jurisdiction, of comparatively mod- 
ern creation, and having its own separate establishment of 
officers. On the whole, then, Scott's attendance in Court may 
be taken to have amounted, on the average, to from four to 
six hours daily during rather less than six months out of the 
twelve. 

Not a little of the Clerk's business in Court is merely formal, 
and indeed mechanical ; but there are few days in which he is 
not called upon for the exertion of his higher faculties, in re- 
ducing the decisions of the Bench, orally pronounced, to tech- 
nical shape ; which, in a new, complex, or difficult case, cannot 
be satisfactorily done without close attention to all the previous 
proceedings and written documents, an accurate understanding 
of the principles or precedents on which it has been determined, 
and a thorough command of the whole vocabulary of legal forms. 
Dull or indolent men, promoted through the mere wantonness 
of political patronage, might, no doubt, contrive to devolve the 
harder part of their duty upon humbler assistants : but in gen- 
eral, the office had been held by gentlemen of high character 
and attainments ; and more than one among Scott's own col- 
leagues enjoyed the reputation of legal science that would have 
done honour to the Bench. Such men, of course, prided them- 
selves on doing well whatever it was their proper function to 
do ; and it was by their example, not that of the drones who 
condescended to lean upon unseen and irresponsible inferiors, 
that Scott uniformly modelled his own conduct as a Clerk of 
Session. To do this, required, of necessity, constant study of 



148 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

law-papers and authorities at home. There was also a great 
deal of really base drudgery, such as the authenticating of reg- 
istered deeds by signature, which he had to go through out of 
Court ; he had, too, a Shrievalty, though not a heavy one, all 
the while upon his hands ; — and, on the whole, it forms one 
of the most remarkable features in his history, that, through- 
out the most active period of his literary career, he must have 
devoted a large proportion of his hours, during half at least of 
every year, to the conscientious discharge of professional duties. 

Henceforth, then, when in Edinburgh, his literary work was 
performed chiefly before breakfast ; with the assistance of 
such evening hours as he could contrive to rescue from the 
consideration of Court papers, and from those social engage- 
ments in which, year after year, as his celebrity advanced, he 
was of necessity more and more largely involved ; and of those 
entire days during which the Court of Session did not sit — 
days which, by most of those holding the same official sta- 
tion, were given to relaxation and amusement. So long as he 
continued quartermaster of the Volunteer Cavalry, of course 
he had, even while in Edinburgh, some occasional horse exer- 
cise ; but, in general, his town life henceforth was in that 
respect as inactive as his country life ever was the reverse. 
He scorned for a long while to attach any consequence to this 
complete alternation of habits ; but we shall find him confess- 
ing in the sequel that it proved highly injurious to his bodily 
health. 

I may here observe, that the duties of his clerkship brought 
him into close daily connexion with a set of gentlemen, most 
of whom were soon regarded by him with the most cordial 
affection and confidence. One of his new colleagues was 
David Hume (the nephew of the historian), whose lectures on 
the Law of Scotland are characterised with just eulogy in the 
Ashestiel Memoir, and who subsequently became a Baron of 
the Exchequer ; a man as virtuous and amiable, as conspicuous 
for masculine vigour of intellect and variety of knowledge. 
Another was Hector Macdonald Buchanan of Drummakiln, 
a frank-hearted and generous gentleman, not the less accepta- 
ble to Scott for the Highland prejudices which he inherited 
with the high blood of Clanranald ; at whose beautiful seat of 
Ross Priory, on the shores of Lochlomond, he was henceforth 
almost annually a visitor — a circumstance which has left 
many traces in the Waverley Novels. A third (though I be- 
lieve of later appointment), with whom his intimacy was not 
less strict, was the late excellent Sir Robert Dundas, of Beech- 



CLERK OF SESSION. 149 

wood, Bart. ; and the fourth, was the friend of his boyhood, 
one of the dearest he ever had, Colin Mackenzie of Portmore. 
With these gentlemen's families, he and his lived in such con- 
stant familiarity of kindness, that the children all called their 
fathers' colleagues uncles, and the mothers of their little friends, 
aunts; and in truth, the establishment was a brotherhood. 



CHAPTER V. 

Marmion — Edition of Dryden, &c. — Morritt — Domestic life — Quarrel 
with Constable & Co. — John Ballantyne started as a Publisher — 
The Quarterly Review begun. 1806-1809. 

During the whole of 1806 and 1807 Dryden continued to 
occupy the greater share of Scott's literary hours ; but in the 
course of the former year he found time, and (notwithstanding 
a few political bickerings) inclination to draw up three papers 
for the Edinburgh Review ; one being that exquisite piece of 
humour, the article on the Miseries of Human Life, to which 
Mr. Jeffrey added some, if not all, of the Reviewers' Groans. 
He also edited, with Preface and Notes, Original Memoirs 
written during the Great Civil Wars ; being the Life of Sir 
Henry Slingsby, and Memoirs of Captain Hodgson, &c. This 
volume was put forth in October 1806 by Constable ; and in 
November he began Marmion, — the first of his own Poems 
in which that enterprising firm had a primary part. 

He was at this time in communication with several booksell- 
ers, each of whom would willingly have engrossed his labour ; 
but from the moment that his undertakings began to be serious, 
he seems to have acted on the maxim, that no author should 
ever let any one house fancy that they had obtained a right 
of monopoly over his works — or, as he expressed it, in the 
language of the Scottish feudalists, " that they had completely 
thirled him to their mill." Of the conduct of Messrs. Long- 
man, he has attested that it was liberal beyond his expectation ; 
but, nevertheless, a negotiation which they now opened proved 
fruitless. Constable offered a thousand guineas for the poem 
very shortly after it was begun, and without having seen one 
line of it. It is hinted in the Introduction of 1830, that pri- 
vate circumstances rendered it desirable for Scott to obtain the 
immediate command of such a sum; the price was actually 
paid long before the book was published ; and it suits very well 
with Constable's character to suppose that his readiness to 
advance the money may have outstripped the calculations of 
more established dealers, and thus cast the balance in his 

150 



MABMION. 151 

favour. He was not, however, so unwise as to keep the whole 
adventure to himself. His bargain being concluded, he ten- 
dered one-fourth of the copyright , to Miller of Albemarle 
Street, and another to John Murray, then of Fleet Street ; and 
the latter at once replied, " We both view it as honourable, 
profitable, and glorious to be concerned in the publication of a 
new poem by Walter Scott." The news that a thousand guineas 
had been paid for an unseen and unfinished MS. seemed in 
those days portentous ; and it must be allowed that the man 
who received such a sum for a performance in embryo, had 
made a great step in the hazards as well as in the honours of 
authorship. The private circumstances which he alludes to 
as having precipitated his reappearance as a poet were con- 
nected with his brother Thomas's final withdrawal from his 
practice as a Writer to the Signet; but it is extremely improba- 
ble that, in the absence of any such occurrence, a young, ener- 
getic, and ambitious man would have long resisted the stimulus 
of such success as had attended the Last Minstrel. 

" I had formed," he says, " the prudent resolution to bestow 
a little more labour than I had yet done, and to be in no hurry 
again to announce myself as a candidate for literary fame. 
Accordingly, particular passages of a poem which was finally 
called Marmion were laboured with a good deal of care by one 
by whom much care was seldom bestowed. Whether the work 
was worth the labour or not, I am no competent judge ; but I 
may be permitted to say, that the period of its composition 
was a very happy one in my life ; so much so, that I remember 
with pleasure at this moment (1830) some of the spots in 
which particular passages were composed." The first four of the 
Introductory Epistles are dated Ashestiel, and they point out 
very distinctly some of these spots. There is a knoll with 
some tall old ashes on the adjoining farm of the Peel, where he 
was very fond of sitting by himself, and it still bears the name 
of the Sheriff's Knowe. Another favourite seat was beneath 
a huge oak hard by the river, at the extremity of the Jiaugh of 
Ashestiel. It was here that while meditating his verses he 
used 

" To waste the solitary day 
In plucking from yon fen the reed, 
And watch it floating down the Tweed." 

He frequently wandered far from home, however, attended 
only by his dog, and would return late in the evening, having 
let hour after hour slip away among the soft and melancholy 



152 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

wildernesses where Yarrow creeps from her fountains. The 
lines, 

" Oft in my mind such, thoughts awake, 
By lone Saint Mary's silent lake," &c. 

paint a scene not less impressive than what Byron found amidst 
the gigantic pines of the forest of B-avemia ; and how com- 
pletely does he set himself before us in the moment of his 
gentler and more solemn inspiration, by the closing couplet, — 

" Your horse's hoof -tread sounds too rude, 
So stilly is the solitude." 

But when the theme was of a more stirring order, he enjoyed 
pursuing it over brake and fell at the full speed of his Lieu- 
tenant. I well remember his saying, as I rode with him across 
the hills from Ashestiel to Newark one day in his declining 
years — " Oh, man, I had many a grand gallop among these 
braes when I was thinking of Marmion, but a trotting canny 
pony must serve me now." 

Mr. Skene, however, informs me that many of the more en- 
ergetic descriptions, and particularly that of the battle of Flod- 
den, were struck out while he was in quarters again with his 
cavalry, in the autumn "of 1807. " In the intervals of drilling," 
he says, " Scott used to delight in walking his powerful black 
steed up and down by himself upon the Portobello sands, 
within the beating of the surge ; and now and then you would 
see him plunge in his spurs, and go off as if at the charge, with 
the spray dashing about him. As we rode back to Mussel- 
burgh, he often came and placed himself beside me, to repeat 
the verses that he had been composing during these pauses of 
our exercise." 

He seems to have communicated fragments of the poem very 
freely during the whole of its progress. As early as the 22d 
February 1807, I find Mrs. Hayman acknowledging, in the 
name of the Princess of Wales, the receipt of a copy of the 
Introduction to Canto III., in which occurs the tribute to her 
heroic father, mortally wounded the year before at Jena — 
a tribute so grateful to her feelings, that she sent the poet an 
elegant silver vase as a memorial of her thankfulness. And 
about the same time, the Marchioness of Abercorn expresses 
the delight with which both she and her lord had read the 
generous verses on Pitt and Pox. But his connexion with this 
family was no new one ; for his father, and afterwards his 
brother, had been the auditors of their Scotch rental. 



MARM10N. 153 

In March, his researches concerning Dryden carried him 
again to the south. For several weeks he gave his day pretty 
regularly to the pamphlets and MSS. of the British Museum, 
and the evening to the brilliant societies that now courted him 
whenever he came within their sphere. " As I had," he writes 
to his brother-in-law in India, " contrary to many who avowed 
the same opinions in sunshine, held fast my integrity during 
the Foxites' interval of power, I found myself of course very 
well with the new administration." But he uniformly reserved 
his Saturday and Sunday either for Mr. Ellis at Sunninghill, 
or Lord and Lady Abercorn at Stanmore ; and the press copy 
of Cantos I. and II. of Marmion attests that most of it reached 
Ballantyne in sheets franked by the Marquis, or his son-in-law 
Lord Aberdeen. Before he turned homeward, he made a short 
visit to his friend William Bose in Hampshire, and enjoyed 
in his company various long rides in the New Forest, a day in 
the dock-yard of Portsmouth, and two or three more in the Isle 
of Wight. Several sheets of Canto III. are also under covers 
franked from Gundimore. In the first week of May we find 
him at Lichfield, having diverged from the great road to Scot- 
land for the purpose of visiting Miss Seward. Her account of 
her correspondent, whom till now she had never seen, was ad- 
dressed to Mr. Cary, the translator of Dante. " This proudest 
boast of the Caledonian muse is tall," she says, " and rather 
robust than slender, but lame in the same manner as Mr. Hay- 
ley, and in a greater measure. Neither the contour of his face 
nor yet his features are elegant; his complexion healthy, and 
somewhat fair, without bloom. We find the singularity of 
brown hair and eye-lashes, with flaxen eye-brows ; and a coun- 
tenance open, ingenuous, and benevolent. When seriously con- 
versing or earnestly attentive, though his eyes are rather of 
a lightish grey, deep thought is on their lids ; he contracts his 
brow, and the rays of genius gleam aslant from the orbs beneath 
them. An upper lip too long prevents his mouth from being 
decidedly handsome; but the sweetest emanations of temper 
and heart play about it when he talks cheerfully or smiles — 
and in company he is much oftener gay than contemplative — 
his conversation an overflowing fountain of brilliant wit, ap- 
posite allusion, and playful archness — while on serious themes 
it is nervous and eloquent ; the accent decidedly Scotch, yet 
by no means broad. Not less astonishing than was Johnson's 
memory is that of Mr. Scott ; like Johnson, also, his recitation 
is too monotonous and violent to do justice either to his own 
writings or those of others." Miss Seward adds, that she 



154 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

showed him the passage in Cary's Dante where Michael Scott 
occurs, and that though he admired the spirit and skill of the 
version, he confessed his inability to find pleasure in the Divina 
Commedia. " The plan/' he said, " appeared to him unhappy ; 
the personal malignity and strange mode of revenge presumpt- 
uous and uninteresting." By the 12th of May he was at Edin- 
burgh for the commencement of the summer session, and the 
printing of his Poem seems thenceforth to have gone on at times 
with great rapidity, at others slowly and irregularly ; the lat- 
ter cantos having no doubt been merely blocked out when the 
first went to press, and his professional avocations, but above 
all his Dryden, occasioning frequent interruptions. 

Mr. Guthrie Wright, who was among the familiar associates 
of the Troop, has furnished me with some details which throw 
light on the construction of Marmion. This gentleman had, 
through Scott's good offices, succeeded his brother Thomas in 
the charge of the Abercorn business. — "In the summer of 
1807, ;; he says, " I had the pleasure of making a trip with Sir 
Walter to Dumfries, for the purpose of meeting Lord Abercorn 
on his way to Ireland. His Lordship did not arrive for two 
or three days, and we employed the interval in visiting Sweet- 
heart Abbey, Caerlaverock Castle, and some other ancient 
buildings in the neighbourhood. He recited poetry and old 
legends from morn till night ; and it is impossible that any- 
thing could be more delightful than his society ; but what I 
particularly allude to is the circumstance, that at that time he 
was writing Marmion, the three or four first cantos of which he 
had with him, and which he was so good as read to me. It is 
unnecessary to say how much I was enchanted with them; 
but as he good-naturedly asked me to state any observations 
that occurred to me, I said in joke that it appeared to me he 
had brought his hero by a very strange route into Scotland. 
' Why/ says I, ' did ever mortal coming from England to Edin- 
burgh go by Gifford, Crichton Castle, Borthwick Castle, and 
over the top of Blackford Hill ? Not only is it a circuitous 
detour, but there never was a road that way since the world 
was created!' 'That is a most irrelevant objection,' said Sir 
Walter ; ' it was my good pleasure to bring Marmion by that 
route, for the purpose of describing the places you have men- 
tioned, and the view from Blackford Hill — it was his business 
to find his road and pick his steps the best way he could. 
But, pray, how would you have me bring him ? Not by the 
post-road, surely, as if he had been travelling in a mail-coach ? ' 
— 'No/ I replied; 'there were neither post-roads nor mail- 



MABMION. 155 

coaches in those days; but I think yon might have brought 
him with a less chance of getting into a swamp, by allowing 
him to travel the natural route by Dunbar and the sea-coast ; 
and then he might have tarried for a space with the famous 
Earl of Angus, surnamed Bell-the-Cat, at his favourite resi- 
dence of Tantallon Castle, by which means you would have 
had not only that fortress with all his feudal followers, but 
the Castle of Dunbar, the Bass, and all the beautiful scenery 
of the Forth to describe.' This observation seemed to strike 
him much, and after a pause he exclaimed — ' By Jove, you 
are right ! I ought to have brought him that way ; ' and he 
added, ' but before he and I part, depend upon it he shall visit 
Tantallon.' He then asked if I had ever been there, and 
upon saying I had frequently, he desired me to describe it, 
which I did ; and I verily believe it is from what I then said 
that the accurate description contained in the fifth canto was 
given — at least I never heard him say he had afterwards gone 
to visit the castle ; and when the poem was published, I re- 
member he laughed, and asked me how I liked Tantallon." 

Just a year had elapsed from his beginning the poem, when 
he penned the Epistle for Canto IV. at Ashestiel ; and who, 
that considers how busily his various pursuits and labours had 
been crowding the interval, can wonder to be told that 

" Even now, it scarcely seems a day 
Since first I timed this idle lay — 
A task so often laid aside 
When leisure graver cares denied — 
That now November's dreary gale, 
Whose voice inspired my opening tale, 
That same November gale once more 
Whirls the dry leaves on Yarrow shore." 

The fifth Introduction was written in Edinburgh in the month 
following ; that to the last canto, during the Christmas festiv- 
ities of Mertoun-house, where, from the first days of his ballad- 
rhyming to the close of his life, he, like his bearded ancestor, 
usually spent that season with the immediate head of the race. 
The bulky appendix of notes, including a mass of curious anti- 
quarian quotations, must have moved somewhat slowly through 
the printer's hands ; but Marmion was at length ready for pub- 
lication by the middle of February 1808. 

Among the " graver cares " which he alludes to as having 
interrupted his progress, were those of preparing himself for 
an office to which he was formally appointed soon afterwards, 
namely, that of Secretary to a Parliamentary Commission for 



156 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the improvement of Scottish Jurisprudence. This Commis- 
sion, at the head of which was Sir Islay Campbell, Lord Presi- 
dent of the Court of Session, continued in operation for two or 
three years. Scott's salary, as secretary, was a mere trifle; 
but he had been led to expect that his exertions in this capac- 
ity would lead to better things. In giving a general view of 
his affairs to his brother-in-law in India, he says — "I am 
principally pleased with my new appointment as being con- 
ferred on me by our chief law lords and King's counsel, and 
consequently an honourable professional distinction. The 
employment will be but temporary, but may have consequences 
important to my future lot in life, if I give due satisfaction in 
the discharge of it." He appears accordingly to have sub- 
mitted to a great deal of drudgery, in mastering the technical 
controversies which had called for legislatorial interference ; 
and he discharged his functions, as usual, with the warm ap- 
probation of his superiors ; but no result followed. 

Not only did he write sundry articles for the Edinburgh Re- 
view while Marmion was on hand, but having now frequent 
correspondence with Mr. Southey, whose literature had not as 
yet been very lucrative to him, he made an effort to enlist that 
friend also in the same critical corps. Thalaba and Madoc had 
been handled by them in no very flattering style ; the early 
works of Wordsworth still more irreverently ; but Southey de- 
clined these offers of intermediation on the score mainly of poli- 
tics — expressing, at the same time, some regret that Wordsworth, 
in his magnificent sonnet on Killiecrankie, should have intro- 
duced that type of ultra-Toryism, the Viscount of Dundee, without 
apparent censure of his character. In reply (loth December, 
1807), Scott admits his own " extreme dislike " of the tone of 
the Eeview as to the war with Bonaparte. He says : — "Who 
ever thought he did a service to a person engaged in an ardu- 
ous conflict, by proving to him, or attempting to prove, that he 
must necessarily be beaten ? and what effect can such language 
have but to accelerate the accomplishment of the prophecy which 
it contains ? And as for Catholic Emancipation — I am not, 
God knows, a bigot in religious matters, nor a friend to perse- 
cution ; but if a particular sect of religionists are ipso facto con- 
nected with foreign politics — and placed under the spiritual 
direction of a class of priests, whose unrivalled dexterity and 
activity are increased by the rules which detach them from the 
rest of the world — I humbly think that we may be excused 
from intrusting to them those places in the State where the 
influence of such a clergy, who act under the direction of a 



MABMION. 157 

passive tool of our worst foe, is likely to be attended with the 
most fatal consequences. If a gentleman chooses to walk about 
with a couple of pounds of gunpowder in his pocket, if I give 
him the shelter of my roof, I may at least be permitted to ex- 
clude him from the seat next to the fire. So thinking, I have 
felt your scruples in doing anything for the Review of late. 
As for my good friend Dundee, I cannot admit his culpability 
in the extent you allege ; and it is scandalous of the Sunday 
bard to join in your condemnation, ' and yet come of a noble 
Graeme ! ' x I admit he was tant soit peu sauvage — but he was 
a noble savage ; and the beastly Covenanters against whom he 
acted, hardly had any claim to be called men, unless what was 
founded on their walking upon their hind feet. You can hardly 
conceive the perfidy, cruelty, and stupidity of these people, ac- 
cording to the accounts they have themselves preserved. But 
I admit I had many cavalier prejudices instilled into me, as my 
ancestor was a Killiecrankie man.' 7 

Mr. Southey happened to be in London when Marmion came 
out, and he wrote thus to the author on his return to Keswick 

— " Half the poem I had read at Heber's before my own copy 
arrived. I went punctually to breakfast with him, and he was 
long enough dressing to let me devour so much of it. The story 
is made of better materials than the Lay, yet they are not so 
well fitted together. Asa whole, it has not pleased me so much 

— in parts, it has pleased me more. There is nothing so finely 
conceived in your former poem as the death of Marmion : there 
is nothing finer in its conception anywhere. The introductory 
epistles I did not wish away, because, as poems, they gave me 
great pleasure ; but I wished them at the end of the volume, or 
at the beginning — anywhere except where they were. My taste 
is perhaps peculiar in disliking all interruptions in narrative 
poetry. When the poet lets his story sleep, and talks in his 
own person, it has to me the same sort of unpleasant effect that 
is produced at the end of an act. You are alive to know what 
follows, and lo — down comes the curtain, and the fiddlers begin 
with their abominations." 

I pass over a multitude of the congratulatory effusions of 
inferior names, but must not withhold part of a letter on a 
folio sheet, written not in the first hurry of excitement, but 
two months after Marmion had reached Ellis. He then says : 
— " All the world are agreed that you are like the elephant 
mentioned in the Spectator, who was the greatest elephant in 
the world except himself, and consequently, that the only ques- 

1 James Grahame, author of The Sabbath, &c. 



158 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

tion at issue is, whether the Lay or Marmion shall be reputed 
the most pleasing poem iu our language — save and except one 
or two of Dry den's fables. But, with respect to the two rivals, 
I think the Lay is, on the whole, the greatest favourite. It is 
admitted that the fable of Marmion is greatly superior — that 
it contains a greater diversity of character — that it inspires 
more interest — and that it is by no means inferior in point of 
poetical expression; but it is contended that the incident of 
Deloraine's journey to Melrose surpasses anything in Marmion, 
and that the personal appearance of the Minstrel, who, though 
the last, is by far the most charming of all minstrels, is by 
no means compensated by the idea of an author shorn of his 
picturesque beard, deprived of his harp, and writing letters 
to his intimate friends. These introductory epistles, indeed, 
though excellent in themselves, are in fact only interruptions 
to the fable ; and accordingly, nine out of ten have perused them 
separately, either after or before the poem — and it is obvious 
that they cannot have produced, in either case, the effect which 
was proposed — viz. of relieving the reader's attention, and giv- 
ing variety to the whole. Perhaps, continue these critics, it 
would be fair to say that Marmion delights us in spite of its 
introductory epistles — while the Lay owes its principal charm 
to the venerable old minstrel: — the two poems maybe con- 
sidered as equally respectable to the talents of the author ; but 
the first, being a more perfect whole, will be more constantly 
preferred. Now, all this may be very true — but it is no less 
true that everybody has already read Marmion more than once 
— that it is the subject of general conversation — that it de- 
lights all ages and all tastes, and that it is universally allowed 
to improve upon a second reading. My own opinion is, that 
both the productions are equally good in their different ways : 
yet, upon the whole, I had rather be the author of Marmion than 
of the Lay, because I think its species of excellence of much 
more difficult attainment. What degree of bulk may be essen- 
tially necessary to the corporeal part of an Epic poem, I know 
not ; but sure I am that the story of Marmion might have fur- 
nished twelve books as easily as six — that the masterly char- 
acter of Constance would not have been less bewitching had it 
been much more minutely painted — and that De Wilton might 
have been dilated with great ease, and even to considerable ad- 
vantage ; — in short, that had it been your intention merely to 
exhibit a spirited romantic story instead of making that story 
subservient to the delineation of the manners which prevailed 
at a certain period of our history, the number and variety of 



MARMION. 159 

your characters would have suited any scale of painting. Mar- 
mion is to Deloraine what Tom Jones is to Joseph Andrews ; 
— the varnish of high breeding nowhere diminishes the prom- 
inence of the features — and the minion of a king is as light 
and sinewy a cavalier as the Borderer, — rather less ferocious, 
more wicked, less fit for the hero of a ballad, and far more for 
the hero of a regular poem. On the whole, I can sincerely 
assure you, ' sans phrase,'' that had I seen Marmion without 
knowing the author, I should have ranked it with Theodore 
and Honoria, — that is to say, on the very top shelf of Eng- 
lish poetry." This elegant letter may no doubt be considered 
as an epitome of the very highest and most refined of London 
table-talk on Marmion, during the first freshness of its popu- 
larity, and before the only critical journal of which any one in 
those days thought very seriously, had pronounced its verdict. 

When we consider some parts of that judgment, together with 
the author's personal intimacy with the editor and the aid which 
he had of late been affording to the Review itself, it must be 
allowed that Mr. Jeffrey acquitted himself on this occasion in 
a manner highly creditable to his courageous sense of duty. 
The number for April 1808 was accompanied by this note : — 
"Queen Street, Tuesday. — Dear Scott, — If I did not give you 
credit for more magnanimity than other of your irritable tribe, 
I should scarcely venture to put this into your hands. As it 
is, I do it with no little solicitude, and earnestly hope that it 
will make no difference in the friendship which has hitherto 
subsisted between us. I have spoken of your poem exactly as 
I think, and though I cannot reasonably suppose that you will 
be pleased with everything I have said, it would mortify me 
very severely to believe I had given you pain. If you have 
any amity left for me, you will not delay very long to tell me 
so. In the meantime, I am very sincerely yours, — F. Jeffrey." 

The reader will I hope pause here and read the article as it 
stands ; endeavouring to put himself into the situation of Scott 
when it was laid upon his desk, together with this ominous 
billet from the editor, who, as it happened, had been for some 
time engaged to dine that same Tuesday in Castle Street. The 
detailed criticism of the paper is, I am sure, done in a style on 
which the writer cannot now reflect with perfect equanimity, 
any more than on the lofty and decisive tone of the sweeping 
paragraphs by which it was -introduced. All this, however, I 
can suppose Scott to have gone through with great composure ; 
but he must, I think, have wondered, to say the least, when he 
found himself accused of having "throughout neglected Scot- 



160 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

tish feelings and Scottish characters ! " — He who had just 
poured out all the patriotic enthusiasm of his soul in so many 
passages of Marmion, which every Scotchman to the end of 
time will have by heart ; painted the capital, the court, the 
camp, the heroic old chieftains of Scotland, in colours instinct 
with a fervour that can never die ; and dignified the most fatal 
of her national misfortunes by a celebration as loftily pathetic 
as ever blended pride with sorrow, — a battle-piece which even 
his critic had pronounced to be the noblest save in Homer ! 
But not even this injustice was likely to wound him very 
deeply. Coming from one of the recent witnesses of his pas- 
sionate agitation on the Mound, perhaps he would only smile 
at it. At all events, he could make allowance for the petu- 
lancies into which men the least disposed to injure the feel- 
ings of others will sometimes be betrayed, when the critical 
rod is in their hands. He assured Mr. Jeffrey that the article 
had not disturbed his digestion, though he hoped neither his 
booksellers nor the public would agree with the opinions it 
expressed ; and begged he would come to dinner at the hour 
previously appointed. Mr. Jeffrey appeared accordingly, and 
was received by his host with the frankest cordiality ; but had 
the mortification to observe that the mistress of the house, 
though perfectly polite, was not quite so easy with him as 
usual. She, too, behaved herself with exemplary civility dur- 
ing the dinner ; but could not help saying, in her broken Eng- 
lish, when her guest was departing, "Well, good-night, Mr. 
Jeffrey — cley tell me that you have abused Scott in de Review, 
and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing it." 
This anecdote was not perhaps worth giving ; but it has been 
printed already in an exaggerated shape, so I thought it as 
well to present the edition which I have derived from the lips 
of all the three persons concerned. No one, I am sure, will 
think the worse of any of them for it, — least of all of Mrs. 
Scott. She might well be pardoned, if she took to herself 
more than her own share in the misadventures as well as the 
successes of the most affectionate of protectors. It was, I 
believe, about this time when, as Scott has confessed, " the 
popularity of Marmion gave him such a heeze, he had for a 
moment almost lost his footing," that a shrewd and sly ob- 
server, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, said, wittily enough, upon leav- 
ing a brilliant assembly where the poet had been surrounded 
by all the buzz and glare of fashionable ecstacy — " Mr. Scott 
always seems to me like a glass, through which the rays of 
admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of 



MARMION. 161 

paper that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze — and no 
wonder. " 

I shall not, after so much about criticism, say anything more 
of Marmion in this place, than that I have always considered 
it as on the whole the greatest of Scott's poems. There is a cer- 
tain light, easy, virgin charm about the Lay, which we look for 
in vain through the subsequent volumes of his verse ; but the 
superior strength, and breadth, and boldness both of concep- 
tion and execution in the Marmion appear to me indisputable. 
The great blot, the combination of mean felony with so many 
noble qualities in the character of the hero, was, as the poet 
says, severely commented on at the time by the most ardent of 
his early friends, Leyden ; but though he admitted the justice 
of that criticism, he chose " to let the tree lie as it had fallen." 
He was also sensible that many of the subordinate and connect- 
ing parts of the narrative are flat, harsh, and obscure — but 
would never make any serious attempt to do away with these 
imperfections ; and perhaps they, after all, heighten by con- 
trast the effect of the passages of high-wrought enthusiasm 
which alone he considered, in after days, with satisfaction. 
As for the " epistolary dissertations " (as Jeffrey called them), 
it must, I take it, be allowed that they interfered with the flow 
of the story, when readers were turning the leaves in the first 
glow of curiosity; and they were not, in fact, originally in- 
tended to be interwoven in any fashion with the romance of 
Marmion. Though the author himself does not allude to, and 
had perhaps forgotten the circumstance, when writing the 
Introductory Essay of 1830 — they were announced by an 
advertisement early in 1807 as "Six Epistles from Ettrick 
Forest," to be published in a separate volume ; and perhaps it 
might have been better that this first plan had been adhered to. 
But however that may be, are there any pages, among all he 
ever wrote, that one would be more sorry he should not have 
written ? They are among the most delicious portraitures that 
genius ever painted of itself, — buoyant, virtuous, happy genius 
— exulting in its own energies, yet possessed and mastered by 
a clear, calm, modest mind, and happy only in diffusing happi- 
ness around it. 

The feelings of political partisanship find no place in this 
poem ; but though Mr. Jeffrey chose to complain of its " man- 
ifest neglect of Scottish feelings," I take leave to suspect that 
the boldness and energy of British patriotism which breathes in 
so many passages, may have had more share than that alleged 
omission in pointing the pen that criticised Marmion. Scott 



162 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

had sternly and indignantly rebuked and denounced the then 
too prevalent spirit of anti-national despondence ; he had put 
the trumpet to his lips, and done his part at least to sustain 
the hope and resolution of his countrymen in that struggle 
from which it was the doctrine of the Edinburgh Keview that 
no sane observer of the times could anticipate anything but 
ruin and degradation. He must ever be considered as the 
" mighty minstrel " of the anti-Gallican war ; and it was Mar- 
mion that first announced him in that character. 

Be all this as it may, his connexion with the Review was 
now broken off ; and indeed it was never renewed, except in 
one instance, many years after, when the strong wish to serve 
poor Maturin shook him for a moment from his purpose. The 
loftiest and purest of human beings seldom act but under a 
mixture of motives, anpL I shall not attempt to guess in what 
porportions he was swayed by aversion to the political doc- 
trines which the journal had lately been avowing with increased 
openness — by dissatisfaction with its judgments of his own 
works — or, lastly, by the feeling that, whether those judg- 
ments were or were not just, it was but an idle business for 
him to assist by his own pen the popularity of the vehicle that 
diffused them. That he was influenced more or less by all of 
these considerations, appears highly probable ; and I fancy I 
can trace some indications of each of them in a letter with 
which I am favoured by a warm lover of literature, and a sin- 
cere admirer both of Scott and Jeffrey, and though numbered 
among the Tories in the House of Commons, yet one of the most 
liberal section of his party 1 — who happened to visit Scotland 
shortly after the article on Marmion appeared, and has set down 
his recollections of the course of table-talk at a dinner where he 
for the first time met the poet in company with his censor : — 
" There were/' he says, " only a few people besides the two lions 
— and assuredly I have seldom passed a more agreeable day. 
A thousand subjects of literature, antiquities, and manners, were 
started ; and much was I struck, as you may well suppose, by 
the extent, correctness, discrimination, and accuracy of Jeffrey's 
information ; equally so with his taste, acuteness, and wit, in 
dissecting every book, author, and story that came in our way. 
Nothing could surpass the variety of his knowledge, but the easy 
rapidity of his manner of producing it. He was then in his me- 
ridian. Scott, delighted to draw him out, delighted also to talk 
himself, and displayed, I think, even a larger range of anecdote 
and illustration ; remembering everything, whether true or false, 

1 The late Mr. Morritt of Rokeby. — 1848. 



MARMION. 163 

that was characteristic or impressive ; everything that was good, 
or lovely, or lively. It struck me that there was this great dif- 
ference — Jeffrey, for the most part entertained us, when books 
were under discussion, with the detection of faults, blunders, ab- 
surdities, or plagiarisms : Scott took up the matter where he left 
it, recalled some compensating beauty or excellence for which no 
credit had been allowed, and by the recitation, perhaps, of one fine 
stanza, set the poor victim on his legs again. I believe it was just- 
about this time that Scott had abandoned his place in Mr. Jeffrey's 
corps. The journal had been started among the clever young 
society with which Edinburgh abounded when they were both 
entering life as barristers ; and Jeffrey's principal coadjutors 
for some time were Sydney Smith, Brougham, Horner, Scott 
himself — and on scientific subjects, Play fair; but clever con- 
tributors were sought for in all quarters. But it was not long 
before Brougham dipped the concern deep in witty Whiggery ; 
and it was thought at the time that some very foolish neglects 
on the part of Pitt had a principal share in making several of 
these brilliant young men decide on carrying over their weap- 
ons to the enemy's camp. Scott was a strong Tory, nay, by 
family recollections and poetical feelings of association, a Jac- 
obite. Jeffrey, however, was an early friend — and thus there 
was a confliction of feelings on both sides. Scott, as I was 
told, remonstrated against the deepening Whiggery — Jeffrey 
alleged that he could not resist the wit. Scott offered to try his 
hand at a witty bit of Toryism — but the editor pleaded off, 
upon the danger of inconsistency. These differences first 
cooled — and soon dissolved their federation. — To return to 
our gay dinner. As the claret was taking its rounds, Jeffrey 
introduced some good-natured eulogy of his old supporters — 
Sydney Smith, Brougham, and Horner. ' Come,' says Scott, 
'you can't say too much about Sydney or Brougham, but I 
will not admire your Horner: he always put me in mind 
of Obadiah's bull, who, although as Father Shandy observed, 
he never produced a calf, went through his business with 
such a grave demeanour, that he always maintained his credit 
in the parish ! ' The fun of the illustration tempted him to 
this sally, I believe ; but Horner's talents did not lie in 
humour, and his economical labours were totally uncongenial 
to the mind of Scott." 

Before quitting Marmion and its critics, I ought to say that, 
like the Lay, this and the subsequent great poems were all 
first published in a splendid quarto form. The 2000 of the 
original Marmion, price a guinea and a half, were disposed of 



164 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

in less than a month ; and twelve octavo editions between 1808 
and 1825, had carried the sale to upwards of 30,000 copies, 
before the author included it in the collection of his poetry 
with biographical prefaces in 1830 ; since which period there 
have been frequent reprints ; making an aggregate legitimate 
circulation between 1808 and 1818 of about 60,000. 

Ere the poem was published, a heavy task, begun earlier, 
and continued throughout its progress, had been nearly com- 
pleted ; and there appeared in the last week of April 1808, TJie 
Works of John Dry den, now first collected; with notes historical, 
critical, and exjjlanatory, and a Life of the Author. — Eighteen 
volumes, 8vo. This was the bold speculation of William Miller 
of Albemarle Street ; and the editor's fee, at forty guineas the 
volume, was L.756. The bulk of the collection, the neglect 
into which a majority of the pieces had fallen, the obsoleteness 
of the pjarty politics which had so largely exercised the author's 
pen, and the indecorum, not seldom running into flagrant in- 
decency, by which transcendent genius had ministered to the 
appetites of a licentious age, all combined to make the warmest 
of Scott's admirers doubt whether even his skill and reputation 
would be found sufficient to ensure the success of this under- 
taking. It was, however, better received than any one, except 
perhaps the courageous bookseller himself, had anticipated. 
The entire work was reprinted in 1821 ; — since then the Life 
of Dryden has had its place in various editions of Scott's prose 
miscellanies ; nor perhaps does that class of his writings include 
any piece which keeps a higher estimation. 

This Dryden was criticised in the Edinburgh Eeview for 
October 1808, with great ability, and, on the whole, with ad- 
mirable candour. The industry and perspicacity with which 
Scott had carried through his editorial researches and annota- 
tions were acknowledged in terms which, had he known the 
name of his reviewer, must have been doubly gratifying ; and 
it was confessed that, in the life of his author, he had corrected 
with patient honesty, and filled up with lucid and expansive 
detail, the sometimes careless and often naked outline of John- 
son's masterly Essay. It would be superfluous to quote in this 
j)lace a specimen of critical skill which has already enjoyed 
wide circulation, and which will hereafter, no doubt, be in- 
cluded in the miscellaneous prose works of Hallam. The 
points of political faith on which that great writer dissents 
from the Editor of Dryden, would, even if I had the incli- 
nation to pursue such a discussion, lead me far astray from 
the immediate object of these pages ; they embrace questions 



EDITION OF DRYDEN. 165 

on which the best and wisest of our countrymen will probably 
continue to take opposite sides, as long as our past history 
excites a living interest, and our literature is that of an 
active nation. On the poetical character of Dryden, I think 
the editor and his critic will be found to have expressed sub- 
stantially much the same judgment; when they appear to 
differ, the battle strikes me as being about words rather than 
things, as is likely to be the case when men of such abilities 
and attainments approach a subject remote from their personal 
passions. As might have been expected, the terse and dex- 
terous reviewer has often the better in this logomachy ; but 
when the balance is struck, we discover here, as elsewhere, 
that Scott's broad and masculine understanding had, by what- 
ever happy hardihood, grasped the very result to which others 
win their way by the more cautious processes of logical investi- 
gation. While nothing has been found easier than to attack 
his details, his general views on critical questions have seldom, 
if ever, been successfully impugned. 

I wish I could believe that Scott's labours had been sufficient 
to recall Dryden to his rightful station, not in the opinion of 
those who make literature the business or chief solace of their 
lives — for with them he had never forfeited it — but in the 
general favour of the intelligent public. That such has been 
the case, however, the not rapid sale of two editions, aided as 
they were by the greatest of living names, can be no proof ; nor 
have I observed among the numberless recent speculations of 
the English booksellers, a single reprint of even those tales, 
satires, and critical essays, not to be familiar with which would, 
in the last age, have been considered as disgraceful in any one 
making the least pretension to letters. 

Scott's Biography of Dryden — the only life of a great poet 
which he has left us, and also his only detailed work on the 
personal fortunes of one to whom literature was a profession 
— was penned just when he had begun to apprehend his own 
destiny. On this point of view, forbidden to contemporary 
delicacy, we may now pause with blameless curiosity. Seri- 
ously as he must have in those days been revolving the haz- 
ards of literary enterprise, he could not, it is probable, have 
handled any subject of this class without letting out here and 
there thoughts and feelings proper to his own biographer's 
province ; but, widely as he and his predecessor may appear 
to stand apart as regards some of the most important both of 
intellectual and moral characteristics, they had nevertheless 
many features of resemblance, both as men and as authors; 



166 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

and I doubt if the entire range of our annals could have fur- 
nished a theme more calculated to keep Scott's scrutinising 
interest awake, than that which opened on him as he contem- 
plated step by step the career of Dryden. There are grave 
lessons which that story was not needed to enforce upon his 
mind: he required no such beacon to make him revolt from 
paltering with the dignity of woman, or the passions of youth, 
or insulting by splenetic levities the religious convictions of 
any portion of his countrymen. But Dryden's prostitution of 
his genius to the petty bitternesses of political warfare, and 
the consequences both as to the party he served, and the an- 
tagonists he provoked, might well supply matter for serious 
consideration to the author of the Melville song. " Where," 
says Scott, " is the expert swordsman that does not delight in 
the flourish of his weapon ? and a brave man will least of all 
withdraw himself from his ancient standard when the tide 
of battle beats against it." But he says also, — and I know 
enough of his own then recent experiences, in his intercourse 
with some who had been among his earliest and dearest asso- 
ciates, not to apply the language to the circumstances that 
suggested it — "He who keenly engages in political contro- 
versy must not only encounter the vulgar abuse which he may 
justly contemn, but the altered eye of friends whose regard is 
chilled." Nor, when he adds that " the protecting zeal of his 
party did not compensate Dryden for the loss of those whom 
he alienated in their service,'-' can I help connecting this re- 
flexion too with his own subsequent abstinence from party 
personalities, in which, had the expert swordsman's delight in 
the flourish of his weapon prevailed, he might have rivalled 
the success of either Dryden or Swift, to be repaid like them 
by the settled rancour of Whigs and the jealous ingratitude 
of Tories. 

It is curious enough to compare the hesitating style of his 
apology for that tinge of evanescent superstition which seems 
to have clouded occasionally Dryden's bright and solid mind, 
with the open avowal that he has " pride in recording his 
author's decided admiration of old ballads and popular tales;" 
and perhaps his personal feelings were hardly less his prompter 
where he dismisses with brief scorn the sins of negligence and 
haste which had been so often urged against Dryden. " Noth- 
ing," he says, " is so easily attained as the power of present- 
ing the extrinsic qualities of fine painting, fine music, or fine 
poetry ; the beauty of colour and outline, the combination of 
notes, the melody of versification, may be imitated by artists 



EDITION OF DRYDEN. 167 

of mediocrity ; and many will view, hear, or peruse their per- 
formances, without being able positively to discover why they 
should not, since composed according to all the rules, afford 
pleasure equal to those of Raphael, Handel, or Dryden. The 
deficiency lies in the vivifying spirit, which, like alcohol, may 
be reduced to the same principle in all the fine arts. The 
French are said to possess the best possible rules for building 
ships of war, although not equally remarkable for their power 
of fighting them. When criticism becomes a pursuit separate 
from poetry, those who follow it are apt to forget that the 
legitimate ends of the art for which they lay down rules, are 
instruction and delight ; and that these points being attained, 
by what road soever, entitles a poet to claim- the prize of suc- 
cessful merit. Neither did the learned authors of these dis- 
quisitions sufficiently attend to the general disposition of 
mankind, which cannot be contented even with the happiest 
imitations of former excellence, but demands novelty as a 
necessary ingredient for amusement. To insist that every 
epic poem shall have the plan of the Iliad, and every tragedy 
be modelled by the rules of Aristotle, resembles the principle 
of the architect who should build all his houses with the same 
number of windows and of stories. It happened, too, inevi- 
tably, that the critics, in the plenipotential authority which 
they exercised, often assumed as indispensable requisites of 
the drama, or epopeia, circumstances which, in the great au- 
thorities they quoted, were altogether accidental or indifferent. 
These they erected into laws, and handed down as essential ; 
although the forms prescribed have often as little to do with 
the merit and success of the original from which they are 
taken as the shape of the drinking glass with the flavour of 
the wine which it contains." These sentences appear, from 
the dates, to have been penned immediately after the biog- 
rapher of Dryden had perused the Edinburgh Review on 
Marmion. 

I conclude with a passage, in writing which he seems to 
have anticipated the only serious critical charge that was ever 
brought against his edition of Dryden as a whole — namely, 
the loose and irregular way in which his own sestlietical no- 
tions are indicated, rather than expounded. " While Dryden," 
says Scott, "examined, discussed, admitted, or rejected the 
rules proposed by others, he forbore, from prudence, indolence, 
or a regard for the freedom of Parnassus, to erect himself into 
a legislator. His doctrines are scattered without system or 
pretence to it: — it is impossible to read far without finding 



168 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

some maxim for doing, or forbearing, which every student of 
poetry will do well to engrave upon the tablets of his mem- 
ory ; but the author's mode of instruction is neither harsh nor 
dictatorial." 

On the whole, it is impossible to doubt that the success of 
Dryden in rapidly reaching, and till the end of a long life 
holding undisputed, the summit of public favour and repu- 
tation, in spite of his "brave neglect" of minute finishing, 
narrow laws, and prejudiced authorities, must have had a 
powerful effect in nerving Scott's hope and resolution for the 
wide ocean of literary enterprise into which he had now fairly 
launched his bark. Like Dryden, he felt himself to be " am- 
ply stored with acquired knowledge, much of it the fruits 
of early reading and application ; " anticipated that though, 
" while engaged in *the hurry of composition, or overcome by 
the lassitude of continued literary labour," he should some- 
times " draw with too much liberality on a tenacious memory," 
no " occasional imperfections would deprive him of his praise ; " 
in short, made up his mind that. " pointed and nicely-turned 
lines, sedulous study, and long and repeated correction and 
revision " would all be dispensed with, — provided their place 
were supplied as in Dryden by "rapidity of conception, a 
readiness of expressing every idea without losing anything by 
the way — perpetual animation and elasticity of thought — and 
language never laboured, never loitering, never (in Dryden's 
own phrase) cursedly confined." 

I believe that Scott had, in 1807, agreed with London book- 
sellers as to the superintendence of two other large collections, 
the Somers' Tracts and the Sadler State Papers ; but it seems 
that Constable first heard of these engagements when he ac- 
companied the second cargo of Marmion to the great southern 
market; and, alarmed at the prospect of losing his hold on 
Scott's industry, he at once invited him to follow up his Dry- 
den by an Edition of Swift on the same scale, — offering, more- 
over, to double the rate of payment ; that is to say, to give him 
L.1500 for the new undertaking. This munificent tender was 
accepted ; and as early as May 1808, I find Scott writing in 
all directions for books, pamphlets, and MSS., likely to be 
serviceable in illustrating the Life and Works of the Dean 
of St. Patrick's. While these were accumulating about him, 
which they soon did in greater abundance than he had an- 
ticipated, he concluded his labours on Sadler, and kept pace 
at the same time with Ballantyne, as the Somers' Tracts con- 
tinued to move through the press. The Sadler was published 



OTHEB PUBLICATIONS. 169 

in 1809, in three large volumes, quarto ; but the last of the 
thirteen equally ponderous tomes to which Somers extended, 
was not dismissed from his desk until towards the conclusion 
of 1812. 

He also edited this year, for Murray, Strutt's unfinished 
romance of Queenhoo-hall, with a conclusion in the fashion of 
the original ; for Constable, Carleton's Memoirs of the War of 
the Spanish Succession, to which he gave a lively preface and 
various notes ; and the Memoirs of Robert Cary, Earl of Mon- 
mouth. The republication of Carleton, 1 Johnson's eulogy of 
which fills a pleasant page in Boswell, had probably been 
suggested by the interest which Scott took in the first outburst 
of Spanish patriotism consequent on Napoleon's transactions 
at Bayonne. There is one passage in the preface which I 
must transcribe. Speaking of the absurd recall of Peter- 
borough from the command in which he had exhibited such a 
wonderful combination of patience and prudence with military 
daring, he says : — " One ostensible reason was, that Peter- 
borough's parts were of too lively and mercurial a quality, 
and that his letters shewed more wit than became a General ; 
— a commonplace objection, raised by the dull malignity of 
commonplace minds, against those whom they see discharging 
with ease and indifference the tasks which they themselves 
execute (if at all) with the sweat of their brow and in the 
heaviness of their hearts. There is a certain hypocrisy in 
business, whether civil or military, as well as in religion, 
which they will do well to observe who, not satisfied with 
discharging their duty, desire also the good repute of men." 
It was not long before some of the dull malignants of the 
Parliament House began to insinuate what at length found a 
dull and dignified mouthpiece in the House of Commons — 
that if a Clerk of Session had any real business to do, it could 
not be done well by a man who found time for more literary 
enterprises than any other author of the age undertook — 
" wrote more books," Lord Archibald Hamilton serenely added, 
" than anybody could find leisure to read " — and, moreover, 
mingled in general society as much as many that had no 
pursuit but pleasure. 

The eager struggling of the different booksellers to engage 

1 It seems to be now pretty generally believed that CarletoiVs Me- 
moirs were among the numberless fabrications of l)e Foe ; but in this 
case (if the fact indeed be so), as in that of his Cavalier, he no doubt 
had before him the rude journal of some officer who had fought and bled 
in the campaigns described with such an air of truth. 



170 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Scott at this time, is a very amusing feature in the voluminous 
correspondence before me. Had he possessed trebl 3 the energy 
for which it was possible to give any man cred:.t, he could 
never have encountered a tithe of the projects that the post 
brought day after day to him, announced with sxtravagant 
enthusiasm, and urged with all the arts of conciliation. I 
shall mention only one out of at least a dozen gigantic schemes 
which were thus proposed before he had well settled himself 
to his Swift ; and I do so, because something of the kind was 
a few years later carried into execution. This was a General 
Edition of British Novelists, — beginning with De Eoe and 
reaching to the end of the last century — to be set forth with 
prefaces and notes by Scott, and printed of course by Ballan- 
tyne. The projector was Murray, who was now eager to start 
on all points in the race with Constable ; but this was not, as 
we shall see presently, the only business that prompted my 
enterprising friend's first visit to Ashestiel. 

Conversing with Scott, towards the end of his toils, about 
the tumult of engagements in which he was thus involved, he 
said, " Aye — it was enough to tear me to pieces — but there 
was a wonderful exhilaration about it all : my blood was kept 
at fever-pitch — I felt as if I could have grappled with any- 
thing and everything; then there was hardly one of all my 
schemes that did not afford me the means of serving some 
poor devil of a brother author. There were always huge 
piles of materials to be arranged, sifted, and indexed — vol- 
umes of extracts to be transcribed — journeys to be made hither 
and thither, for ascertaining little facts and dates, — in short, 
I could commonly keep half-a-dozen of the ragged regiment of 
Parnassus in tolerable case." I said he must have felt some- 
thing like what a locomotive engine on a railway might be 
supposed to do, when a score of coal waggons are seen linking 
themselves to it the moment it gets the steam up, and it 
rushes on its course regardless of the burden. " Yes," said he, 
laughing, and making a crashing cut with his axe (for we were 
felling larches ;) " but there was a cursed lot of dung carts too." 
He was seldom, in fact, without some of these appendages; 
and I admired nothing more in him than the patient courtesy, 
the unwearied gentle kindness with which he always treated 
them, in spite of their delays and blunders, to say nothing of 
the almost incredible vanity and presumption which more than 
one of them often exhibited in the midst of their fawning ; and, 
I believe, with all their faults, the worst and weakest of them 
repaid him by a canine fidelity of affection. This part of 



OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 171 

Scott's character recalls by far the most pleasing trait in that 
of his last predecessor in the plenitude of literary authority — 
Dr. Johnson. There was perhaps nothing (except the one 
great blunder) that had a worse effect on the course of his 
pecuniary fortunes, than the readiness with which he exerted 
his interest with the booksellers on behalf of inferior writers. 
Even from the commencement of his connexion with Con- 
stable in particular, I can trace a continual series of such 
applications. They stimulated' the already too sanguine pub- 
lisher to numberless risks ; and when these failed, the result 
was, in one shape or another, some corresponding deduction 
from the fair profits of his own literary labour. " I like well," 
Constable was often heard to say in the sequel, " I like well 
Scott's ain bairns — but heaven preserve me from those of his 
fathering ! " 

Every now and then, however, he had the rich compensation 
of finding that his interference had really promoted the inter- 
ests «f some meritorious obscure. None more meritorious 
could be named than John Struthers, a shoemaker of Glasgow, 
whose very striking poem, The "Poor, Man's Sabbath, being 
seen in MS. by Miss Joanna Baillie when on a visit to her 
native district, was by her recommended to Scott, and by him 
to Constable, who published it in 1808. Mr. Struthers made a 
pilgrimage of gratitude to Ashestiel, where he was received 
with hearty kindness ; and it is pleasing to add, that he ended 
his life in a very respectable position — as keeper of Stirling's 
Library, an old endowment in Glasgow. 

James Hogg was by this time beginning to be appreciated ; 
and the popularity of his Mountain Bard encouraged Scott to 
more strenuous intercession in his behalf. I have before me a 
long array of letters on this subject, which passed between 
Scott and the Earl of Dalkeith and his brother Lord Montagu, 
in 1808. Hogg's prime ambition at this period was to procure 
an ensigncy in a militia regiment, and he seems to have set 
little by Scott's representations that the pay of such a situa- 
tion was very small and that, if he obtained it, he would 
probably find his relations with his brother officers far from 
agreeable. There was, however, another objection which Scott 
could not hint to the aspirant himself, but which seems to 
have been duly considered by those who were anxious to pro- 
mote his views. Militia officers of that day were by no means 
unlikely to see their nerves put to the test ; and the Shep- 
herd's — though he wrote some capital war-songs, especially 
Donald Macdonald — were not heroically strung. This was in 



172 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

truth no secret among his early intimates, though he had not 
measured himself at all exactly on that score, and was even 
tempted, when he found there was no chance of the militia 
epaulette, to threaten that he would " list for a soldier " in a 
marching regiment. Notwithstanding at least one melancholy 
precedent, the Excise, which would have suited him almost as 
badly as "hugging Brown Bess," was next thought of; and 
the Shepherd himself seems to have entered into that plan 
with considerable alacrity : but I know not whether he changed 
his mind, or what other cause prevented such an appointment 
from taking place. After various shiftings, he at last obtained 
from the Duke of Buccleuch's kindness, the gratuitous life- 
rent of a small farm in the vale of Yarrow ; and had he con- 
tented himself with the careful management of its fields, the 
rest of his days might have been easy. But he could not 
withstand the attractions of Edinburgh, which carried him 
away from Altrive for months every year ; and when at home, 
a warm and hospitable disposition, so often stirred by vanity 
less pardonable than his, made him convert his cottage into an 
unpaid hostelrie for the reception of endless troops of thought- 
less admirers ; and thus, in spite of much help and much for- 
bearance, he was never out of one set of pecuniary difficulties 
before he had begun to weave the meshes of some fresh 
entanglement. In pace requiescat. There will never be such 
an Ettrick Shepherd again. 

In May 1808, Joanna Baillie spent a week or two under 
Scott's roof in Edinburgh. Their acquaintance was thus knit 
into a deep and respectful affection on both sides ; and hence- 
forth they maintained a close epistolary correspondence, which 
will always be read with special interest. But within a few 
weeks after her departure, he was to commence another inti- 
macy not less sincere and cordial ; and one productive of a still 
more important series of his letters. He had now reached a 
period of life after which real friendships are but seldom 
formed ; and it is fortunate that another with an Englishman 
of the highest class of accomplishments had been thoroughly 
compacted before death cut the ties between him and George 
Ellis — because his dearest intimates within Scotland had of 
course but a slender part in his written correspondence. Mr. 
Morritt of Rokeby and his wife had long been, intimate with 
Lady Louisa Stuart and Mr. William Rose ; and the meeting, 
therefore, had been well prepared for. It took place at Edin- 
burgh in June. Scott shewed them the lions of the town and 
its vicinity, exactly as if he had nothing else to attend to but 



MOBRITT. 173 

their gratification ; and Mr. Morritt recollected with particular 
pleasure one long day spent in rambling along the Esk by 
Eoslin and Hawthornden, 

Where Jonson sat in Drummond's social shade, 

down to the old haunts of Lasswade. "When we approached 
that village," he writes, — " Scott, who had laid hold of my 
arm, turned along the road in a direction not leading to the 
place where the carriage was to meet us. After walking some 
minutes towards Edinburgh, I suggested that we were losing 
the scenery of the Esk, and, besides, had Dalkeith Palace yet 
to see. ' Yes,' said he, ' and I have been bringing you where 
there is little enough to be seen — only that Scotch cottage — 
(one by the roadside, with a small garth) — but, though not 
worth looking at, I could not pass it. It was our first country- 
house when newly married, and many a contrivance we had to 
make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for it with my own 
hands. Look at these two miserable willow-trees on either 
side the gate into the enclosure ; they are tied together at the 
top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is 
not yet decayed. To be sure, it is not much of a lion to shew 
a stranger ; but I wanted to see it again myself, for I assure 
you that after I had constructed it, mamma (Mrs. Scott) and I 
both of us thought it so fine, we turned out to see it by moon^ 
light, and walked backwards from it to the cottage door, in 
admiration of our own magnificence and its picturesque effect. 
I. did want to see if it was still there — so now we will look 
after the barouche, and make the best of our way to Dalkeith.' 
Such were the natural feelings that endeared the Author of 
Marmion and the Lay to those who saw him in 'the happier 
hour of social pleasure.' His person at that time may be 
exactly known from Raeburn's first picture, which had just 
been executed for his bookseller, Constable, and which was 
a most faithful likeness of him and his dog Camp. The literal 
fidelity of the portraiture, however, is its principal merit. The 
expression is serious and contemplative, very unlike the hilarity 
and vivacity then habitual to his speaking face, but quite true 
to what it was in the absence of such excitement. His features 
struck me at first as commonplace and heavy, — but they were 
almost always lighted up by the flashes of the mind within. 
This required a hand more masterly than Raeburn's ; and 
indeed, in my own opinion, Chan trey alone has in his bust 
attained that, in his case, most difficult task of portraying the 



174 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

features faithfully, and yet giving the real and transient ex- 
pression of the countenance when animated. 

" We passed a week in Edinburgh, chiefly in his society and 
that of his friends the Mackenzies. We were so far on our 
way to Brahan Castle, in Ross-shire. Scott unlocked all his 
antiquarian lore, and supplied us with numberless data, such 
as no guide-book could have furnished, and such as his own 
Monkbarns might have delighted to give. It would be idle to 
tell how much pleasure and instruction his advice added to a 
tour in itself so productive of both, as well as of private friend- 
ships and intimacies, now too generally terminated by death, 
but never severed by caprice or disappointment. His was 
added to the number by our reception now in Edinburgh, and, 
on our return from the Highlands, at Ashestiel — where he 
had made us promise to visit him, saying that the farm-house 
had pigeon-holes enough for such of his friends as could live, 
like him, on Tweed salmon and Eorest mutton. There he was 
the cherished friend and kind neighbour of every middling 
Selkirkshire yeoman, just as easily as in Edinburgh he was the 
companion of clever youth and narrative old age in refined 
society. He carried us one clay to Melrose Abbey or Newark — 
another, to course with mountain greyhounds by Yarrow braes 
or St. Mary's Loch, repeating every ballad or legendary tale 
connected with the scenery — and on a third, we must all go 
to a farmer's kirn, or harvest-home, to dance with Border lasses 
on a barn floor, drink whisky punch, and enter with him into 
all the gossip and good-fellowship of his neighbours, on a com- 
plete footing of unrestrained conviviality, equality, and mutual 
respect. His wife and happy young family were clustered 
round him, and the cordiality of his reception would have 
unbent a misanthrope. 

"At this period his conversation was more equal and ani- 
mated than any man's that I ever knew. It was most charac- 
terised by the extreme felicity and fun of his illustrations, 
drawn from the whole encyclopaedia of life and nature, in a 
style sometimes too exuberant for written narrative, but which 
to him was natural and spontaneous. A hundred stories, al- 
ways apposite, and often interesting the mind by strong pathos, 
or eminently ludicrous, were daily told, which, Avith many more, 
have since been transplanted, almost in the same language, into 
the YVaverley novels and his other writings. These, and his 
recitations of poetry, which can never be forgotten by those 
who knew him, made up the charm that his boundless memory 
enabled him to exert to the wonder of the gaping lovers of 



MOBBITT. 175 

wonders. But equally impressive and powerful was the lan- 
guage of his warm heart, and equally wonderful were the con- 
elusions of his vigorous understanding, to those who could 
return or appreciate either. Among a. number of such recol- 
lections, I have seen many of the thoughts which then passed 
through his mind embodied in the delightful prefaces annexed 
late in life to his poetry and novels. Those on literary quarrels 
and literary irritability are exactly what he then expressed. 
Keenly enjoying literature as he did, and indulging his own 
love of it in perpetual composition, he always maintained the 
same estimate of it as subordinate and auxiliary to the purposes 
of life, and rather talked of men and events than of books and 
criticism. Literary fame, he always said, was a bright feather 
in the cap, but not the substantial cover of a well-protected 
head. This sound and manly feeling was what I have seen 
described by some of his biographers as pride, and it will al- 
ways be thought so by those whose own vanity can only be 
gratified by the admiration of others, and who mistake shows 
for realities. None valued the love and applause of others 
more than Scott ; but it was to the love and applause of those 
he valued in return that he restricted the feeling — without 
restricting the kindness. Men who did not, or would not, 
understand this, perpetually mistook him — and, after loading 
him with undesired eulogy, perhaps in his own house neglected 
common attention or civility to other parts of his family. It 
was on such an occasion that I heard him murmur in my ear, 
' Author as I am, I wish these good people would recollect that 
I began with being a gentleman, and don't mean to give up the 
character.' Such was all along his feeling, and this, with a 
slight prejudice common to Scotchmen in favour of ancient 
and respectable family descent, constituted what in Grub Street 
is called his pride. It was, at least, what Johnson would have 
justly called defensive pride. From all other, and still more 
from mere vanity, I never knew any man so remarkably free." 
The farmer at whose annual Jam Scott and all his household 
were, in those days, regular guests, was Mr. Laidlaw, the Duke 
of Buccleuch's tenant on the lands of Peel, which are only 
separated from the eastern terrace of Ashestiel by the ravine 
and its brook. Mr. Laidlaw was himself possessed of some 
landed property in the same neighbourhood, and being con- 
sidered as wealthy, and fond of his wealth, he was usually 
called among the country people Laird Nippy ; an expressive 
designation which it would be difficult to translate. Though 
a very dry, demure, and taciturn old Presbyterian, he could 



176 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

not resist the Sheriff's jokes ; nay, he even gradually subdued 
his scruples so far as to become a pretty constant attendant at 
his " English printed prayers " on the Sundays ; which, indeed, 
the parish-kirk being eight miles distant, attracted by degrees 
more neighbours than quite suited the capacity of the parlour- 
chapel. Mr. Laidlaw's wife was a woman of superior mind 
and manners — a great reader, and one of the few to whom 
Scott liked lending his books ; for most strict and delicate was 
he always in the care of them, and indeed, hardly any trivial 
occurrence ever seemed to touch his temper at all, except any- 
thing like irreverent treatment of a book. The intercourse 
between the family at Ashestiel and this worthy woman and 
her children, was a constant interchange of respect and kind- 
ness ; but I remember to have heard Scott say that the greatest 
compliment he had ever received in his life was from the rigid 
old farmer himself ; for, years after he had left Ashestiel, he 
discovered casually that special care had been taken to keep 
the turf seat on the Shirra's knoive in good repair ; and this was 
much from Nippy. 

And here I must set down a story, which, most readers will 
smile to be told, was often repeated by Scott, and always with 
an air that seemed to me, in spite of his endeavours to the 
contrary, as grave as the usual aspect of Laird Nippy of the 
Peel. This neighbour was a distant kinsman of his dear friend 
William Laidlaw ; — so distant, that elsewhere in that condition 
they would scarcely have remembered any community of blood ; 
— but they both traced their descent, in the ninth degree, to an 
ancestress who, in the days of John Knox, fell into trouble 
from a suspicion of witchcraft. In her time the Laidlaws 
were rich and prosperous, and held rank among the best 
gentry of Tweeddale ; but in some evil hour, her husband, the 
head of his blood, reproached her with her addiction to the 
black art, and she, in her anger, cursed the name and lineage 
of Laidlaw. Her youngest son, who stood by, implored her to 
revoke the malediction ; but in vain. Next day, however, on 
the renewal of his entreaties, she carried him with her into the 
woods, made him slay a heifer, sacrificed it to the power of 
evil in his presence, and then, collecting the ashes in her apron, 
invited the youth to see her commit them to the river. " Follow 
them," said she, " from stream to pool, as long as they float 
visible, and as many streams as you shall then have passed, 
for so many generations shall your descendants prosper. After 
that, they shall, like the rest of the name, be poor, and take 
their part in my curse." The streams he counted were nine ; 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 177 

" and now," Scott would say, " look round you in this country, 
and sure enough, the Laidlaws are one and all landless men, 
with the single exception of Auld Nippy ! " Many times had 
I heard both him and William Laidlaw tell this story, before 
any suspicion got abroad that Nippy's wealth rested on in- 
secure foundations. Year after year, we never escorted a 
stranger by the Peel, but I heard the tale ; — and at last it 
came with a new conclusion ; — " and now, think whatever we 
choose of it, my good friend Nippy is landless." He had sold 
his own land and quitted the Peel. 

Mr. Morritt's mention of the " happy young family clustered 
round him" at Mr. Laidlaw's kirn, reminds me that I ought to 
say a few words on Scott's method of treating his children in 
their early days. He had now two boys and two girls ; l — and 
he never had more. He was not one of those who take much 
delight in a mere infant ; but no father ever devoted more time 
and tender care to his offspring than he did to each of his, as 
they reached the age when they could listen to him, and under- 
stand his talk. Like their playmates, Camp and the greyhounds, 
they had at all times free access to his study ; he never con- 
sidered their prattle as any disturbance ; they went and came 
as pleased their fancy ; he was always ready to answer their 
questions; and when they, unconscious how he was engaged, 
entreated him to lay down his pen and tell them a story, he 
would take them on his knee, repeat a ballad or a legend, kiss 
them, and set them down again to their marbles or ninepins, 
and resume his labour, as if refreshed by the interruption. 
From a very early age he made them dine at table, and " to sit 
up to supper " was the great reward when they had been " very 
good bairns." In short, he considered it as the highest duty as 
well as the sweetest pleasure of a parent to be the companion 
of his children; he partook all their little joys and sorrows, 
and made his kind unformal instructions to blend so easily and 
playfully with the current of their own sayings and doings, 
that so far from regarding him with any distant awe, it was 
never thought that any sport or diversion could go on in the 
right Avay, unless papa were of the party, or that the rainiest 
day could be dull, so he were at home. 

Of the irregularity of his own education he speaks with 
regret, in the autobiographical fragment written this year at 
Ashestiel ; yet his practice does not look as if that feeling had 
been strongly rooted in his mind; — for he never did shew 

1 Charlotte Sophia, born in October 1799; Walter, October 1801; 
Anne, February 1803 ; Charles, December 1805. 



178 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

much concern about regulating systematically what is usually 
called education in the case of his children. It seemed, on the 
contrary, as if he attached little importance to anything else, 
so he could perceive that the young curiosity was excited — the 
intellect, by whatever springs of interest, set in motion. He 
detested and despised the whole generation of modern chil- 
dren's books, in which the attempt is made to convey accurate 
notions of scientific minutiae : delighting cordially, on the other 
hand, in those of the preceding age, which, addressing them- 
selves chiefly to the imagination, obtain through it, as he be- 
lieved, the best chance of stirring our graver faculties also. 
He exercised the memory by selecting for tasks of recitation 
passages of popular verse the most likely to catch the fancy of 
children ; and gradually familiarised them with the ancient 
history of their own country, by arresting attention, in the 
course of his own oral narrations, on incidents and characters 
of a similar description. Nor did he neglect to use the same 
means of quickening curiosity as to the events of sacred history. 
On Sunday he never rode — at least not until his growing in- 
firmity made his pony almost necessary to him — for it was 
his principle that all domestic animals have a full right to their 
Sabbath of rest ; but after he had read the prayers and lessons 
of the day, he usually walked with his whole family, dogs in- 
cluded, to some favourite spot at a considerable distance from 
the house — most frequently the ruined tower of Elibank — and 
there dined with them in the open air on a basket of cold pro- 
visions, mixing his wine with the water of the brook beside 
which they all were grouped around him on the turf ; and here, 
or at home, if the weather kept them from their ramble, his 
Sunday talk was just such a series of biblical lessons as that 
which we have preserved for the permanent use of rising gen- 
erations, in his Tales of a Grandfather on the early history of 
Scotland. I wish he had committed that other series to writing 
too ; — how different that would have been from our thousand 
compilations of dead epitome and imbecile cant ! He had his 
Bible, the Old Testament especially, by heart ; and on these 
days inwove the simple pathos or sublime enthusiasm of 
Scripture, in whatever story he was telling, with the same 
picturesque richness as in his week-day tales the quaint Scotch 
of Pitscottie, or some rude romantic old rhyme from Barbour's 
Bruce or Blind Harry's Wallace. 

By many external accomplishments, either in girl or boy, he 
set little store. He delighted to hear his daughters sing an 
old ditty, or one of his own framing; but, so the singer ap- 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 179 

peared to feel the spirit of her ballad, lie was not at all 
critical of the technical execution. There was one thing, 
however, on which he fixed his heart hardly less than the 
ancient Persians of the Cyropsedia: like thern, next to love 
of truth, he held love of horsemanship for the prime point of 
education. As soon as his eldest girl could sit a pony, she was 
made the regular attendant of his mountain rides ; and they 
all, as they attained sufficient strength, had the like advance- 
ment. He taught them to think nothing of tumbles, and 
habituated them to his own reckless delight in perilous fords 
and flooded streams ; and they all imbibed in great perfection 
his passion for horses — as well, I may venture to add, as his 
deep reverence for the more important article of that Persian 
training. " Without courage," he said, " there cannot be truth ; 
and without truth there can be no other virtue." 

He had a horror of boarding-schools ; never allowed his girls 
to learn anything out of his own house ; and chose their gover- 
ness — Miss Miller — who about this time was domesticated 
with them, and never left them while they needed one, — 
with far greater regard to her kind good temper and excel- 
lent moral and religious principles, than to the measure of 
her attainments in what are called fashionable accomplish- 
ments. The admirable system of education for boys in 
Scotland combines all the advantages of public and private 
instruction; his carried their satchels to the High School, 
when the family was in Edinburgh, just as he had done before 
them, and shared of course the evening society of their happy 
home. But he rarely, if ever, left them in town, when he 
could himself be in the country; and at Ashestiel he was, 
for better or for worse, his eldest boy's daily tutor, after he 
began Latin. 

His letters of this autumn to such friends as Eose, Morritt, 
and Miss Baillie, give additional details of the pieasant domes- 
tic life of Ashestiel. In one (Sept.) he says to Miss Joanna : — 
" If you ask what I am doing, I am very like a certain ancient 
king, distinguished in the Edda, who, when Lok paid him a 
visit, — 

Was twisting of collars his dogs to hold, 
And combing the mane of his courser bold. 

If this idle man's employment required any apology, we must 
seek it in the difficulty of seeking food to make savoury messes 
for our English guests ; for we are eight miles from market, and 
must call in all the country sports to aid the larder." Scott, 



180 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

however, had business enough at this time, besides combing 
the mane of Brown Adam, and twisting couples for Douglas 
and Percy. He was deep in Swift ; and the Ballantyne press 
was groaning under a multitude of works, with almost all of 
which his hand as well as his head had something, more or 
less, to do. But a serious change was about to take place in 
his relations with the spirited publishing house which had 
hitherto been the most efficient supporters of that press ; and 
his letters begin to be much occupied with disputes which cost 
him many anxious hours in the apparently idle autumn of 1808. 
Mr. Constable had then for his partner Mr. Hunter, afterwards 
Laird of Blackness, to whose intemperate language, much more 
than to any part of Constable's own conduct, Scott ascribed this 
unfortunate alienation ; which, however, as well as most of my 
friend's subsequent misadventures, I am inclined to trace in no 
small degree to the influence which a third person, hitherto 
unnamed, was about this time beginning to exercise over the 
concerns of James Ballantyne. 

John Ballantyne, a younger brother of Scott's school-fellow, 
was originally destined for the paternal trade of a merchant — 
(that is to say, a dealer in everything from fine broadcloth to 
children's tops) — at Kelso. The father seems to have sent 
him when very young to London, where, whatever else he may 
have done in the way of professional training, he spent some 
time in the banking-house of Messrs. Currie. On returning to 
Kelso, however, the "department" which more peculiarly de- 
volved upon him was the tailoring one. 1 His personal habits 
had not been improved by his brief sojourn in the Great City, 
and the business, in consequence (by his own statement) of the 
irregularity of his life, gradually melted to nothing in his 
hands. Early in 1805, his goods were sold off, and barely suf- 
ficed to pay his debts. The worthy old couple found refuge 
with their ever affectionate eldest son, who provided his father 
with some little occupation (real or nominal) about the print- 
ing office ; and thus John himself again quitted his native 
place, under circumstances which, as I shall shew in the se- 
quel, had left a deep and painful trace even upon that volatile 
mind. He had, however, some taste, and he at least fancied 
himself to have some talent for literature ; 2 and the rise of his 

1 The first time that William Laidlaw saw John Ballantyne, he had 
come to Selkirk to measure the troopers of the Yeomanry Cavalry, of 
whom Laidlaw was one, for new breeches. 

2 John Ballantyne, upon the marvellous success of Waverley, wrote 
and published a wretched novel, called The Widow's Lodgings. 



JOHN BALLANTYNE. 181 

brother, who also had met with no success in his original pro- 
fession, was before hirn. He had acquired in London great 
apparent dexterity in book-keeping and accounts. He was 
married by this time ; and it might naturally be hoped, that 
with the severe lessons of the past, he would now apply sed- 
ulously to any duty that might be intrusted to him. The 
concern in the Canongate was a growing one, and James Bal- 
lantyne's somewhat indolent habits were already severely tried 
by its management. The Company offered John a salary of 
L.200 a year as clerk ; and the destitute ex-merchant was too 
happy to accept the proposal. 

He was a quick, active, intrepid little fellow ; and in society so 
very lively and amusing, so full of fun and merriment — such a 
thoroughly light-hearted droll, all-over quaintness and humor- 
ous mimicry ; and moreover, such a keen and skilful devotee 
to all manner of field-sports, from fox-hunting to badger-baiting- 
inclusive, that it was no wonder he should have made a favour- 
able impression on Scott, when he appeared in Edinburgh in 
this destitute plight, and offered to assist James in book-keep- 
ing, which the latter never understood, or could bring himself 
to attend to with regularity. The contrast between the two 
brothers was not the least of the amusement ; indeed that con- 
tinued to amuse him to the last. The elder of these is painted 
to the life in an early letter of Leyden's, which, on the Doctor's 
death, he, though not (I fancy) without wincing, permitted 
Scott to print : — " Methinks I see you with your confounded 
black beard, bull-neck, and upper lip turned up to your nose, 
while one of your eyebrows is cocked perpendicularly, and the 
other forms pretty well the base of a right-angled triangle, 
opening your great gloating eyes, and crying — But Ley den ! ! ! " 
James was a short, stout, well-made man, and would have been 
considered a handsome one, but for these grotesque frowns, 
starts, and twistings of his features, set off by a certain mock 
majesty of walk and gesture, which he had perhaps contracted 
from his usual companions, the emperors and tyrants of the 
stage. His voice in talk was grave and sonorous, and he sung 
well (theatrically well), in a fine rich bass. John's tone in sing- 
ing was a sharp treble — in conversation something between a 
croak and a squeak. Of his style of story-telling it is sufficient 
to say that the late Charles Mathews's " old Scotch lady " was 
but an imperfect copy of the original, which the great comedian 
first heard in my presence from his lips. 1 He was shorter than 

1 The reader will find an amusing anecdote of Johnny in the Memoirs 
of Mathews, by his widow, vol. ii. p. 382. 



182 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

James, but lean as a scarecrow, and he rather hopped than 
walked ; his features, too, were naturally good, and he twisted 
them about quite as much, but in a very different fashion. 
The elder brother was a gourmand — the younger liked his 
bottle and his bowl, as well as, like Johnny Armstrong, "a 
hawk, a hound, and a fair woman." Scott used to call the one 
Aldiborontiphoscophornio — the other Rigdumf unnidos. They 
both entertained him ; they both loved and revered him ; and I 
believe would have shed their heart's blood in his service ; but 
James had serious deficiencies as a man of business, and John 
was not likely to supply them. A more reckless, thoughtless, 
improvident adventurer never rushed into the serious responsi- 
bilities of commerce ; but his cleverness, his vivacity, his unaf- 
fected zeal, his gay fancy always seeing the light side of every- 
thing, his impertubable good-humour, and buoyant elasticity of 
spirits, made and kept him such a favourite, that I believe Scott 
would have as soon ordered his dog to be hanged, as harboured, 
in his darkest hour of perplexity, the least thought of discard- 
ing "jocund Johnny." 

The great bookseller of Edinburgh was a man of calibre infi- 
nitely beyond the Ballantynes. Though with a strong dash of 
the sanguine (without which, indeed, there can be no great pro- 
jector in any walk of life), Archibald Constable was one of the 
most sagacious persons that ever followed his profession. Mr. 
Thomas Campbell writes to Scott, a year or two before this 
time, — " Our butteracious friend at the Cross turns out a deep 
draw-well ; " and another eminent literator, still more closely 
connected with Constable, had already, I believe, christened 
him " The Crafty." Indeed, his fair and very handsome phys- 
iognomy carried a bland astuteness of expression, not to be 
mistaken by any who could read the plainest of nature's hand- 
writing. He made no pretensions to literature — though he 
was in fact a tolerable judge of it generally, and particularly 
well skilled in the department of Scotch antiquities. He dis- 
trusted himself, however, in such matters, being conscious that 
his early education had been very imperfect ; and moreover, he 
wisely considered the business of a critic as quite as much out 
of his "proper line" as authorship itself. But of that "proper 
line," and his own qualifications for it, his estimation was am- 
ple ; and — often as I may have smiled at the lofty serenity of 
his self-complacence — I confess T now doubt whether he rated 
himself too highly as a master in the true science of the book- 
seller. He had, indeed, in his mercantile character one deep 
and fatal flaw — for he hated accounts, and systematically 



QUARBEL WITH CONSTABLE. 183 

refused, during the most vigorous years of his life, to examine 
or sign a balance-sheet; but for casting a keen eye over the 
remotest indications of popular taste — for anticipating the 
chances of success and failure in any given variety of advent- 
ure — for the planning and invention of his calling — he was 
not, in his own day at least, surpassed; and among all his 
myriad of undertakings, I question if any one that really orig- 
inated with himself, and continued to be superintended by his 
own care, ever did fail. He was as bold as far-sighted — and 
his disposition was as liberal as his views were wide. Had he 
and Scott from the beginning trusted as thoroughly as they 
understood each other ; had there been no third parties to step 
in, nattering an overweening vanity on the one hand into pre- 
sumption, and on the other side spurring the enterprise that 
wanted nothing but a bridle, I have no doubt their joint career 
might have been one of unbroken prosperity. But the Ballan- 
tynes were jealous of the superior mind, bearing, and authority 
of Constable; and though he too had a liking for them both 
personally — esteemed James's literary tact, and was far too 
much of a humourist not to be very fond of the younger broth- 
er's company — he could never away with the feeling that they 
intervened unnecessarily, and left him but the shadow, where 
he ought to have had the substantial lion's share, of confidence. 
On his part, again, he was too proud a man to give entire con- 
fidence where that was withheld from himself. 

But in tracing the progress of the coldness which this year 
advanced to a complete rupture, it must be especially kept in 
mind that the Edinburgh Eeview had been the great primary 
source of the wealth and influence of the house of Constable. 
The then comparatively little-known bookseller of London, 
who was destined to be ultimately its most formidable rival in 
more than one department, has told me, that when he read the 
article on Marmion, and another on general politics in the 
same Number, he said to himself — "Walter Scott has feelings 
both as a gentleman and a Tory, which these people must now 
have wounded ; — the alliance between him and the" whole 
clique of the Review, its proprietor included, is shaken ; " and, 
as far at least as the political part of the affair was concerned, 
John Murray's sagacity was not at fault. We have seen with 
what thankful alacrity he accepted a small share in the advent- 
ure of Marmion — and with what brilliant success that was 
crowned ; nor is it wonderful that a young bookseller, con- 
scious of ample energies, should now have watched with eager- 
ness the circumstances which seemed not unlikely to place 



184: LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

within his own reach a more intimate connexion with the first 
great living author in whose works he had ever had any direct 
interest. He forthwith took measures for improving and ex- 
tending his relations with James Ballantyne, through whom, 
as he guessed, Scott could best be approached. His tenders of 
employment for the Canongate press were such that the appar- 
ent head of the firm proposed a conference at Ferrybridge in 
Yorkshire ; and there Murray, after detailing some of his own 
literary plans — particularly that already alluded to, of a 
Novelist's Library — in his turn sounded Ballantyne so far as 
to resolve on pursuing his journey into Scotland. Ballantyne 
had said enough to satisfy him that the project of setting up 
a new publishing house in Edinburgh, in opposition to Con- 
stable, was already all but matured; and he, on the instant, 
proposed himself for its active co-operator in the metropolis. 
The printer proceeded to open his budget farther, mentioning, 
among other things, that the author of Marmion had " both 
another Scotch poem and a /Scotch novel on the stocks ; " and 
had moreover chalked out the design of an Edinburgh Annual 
Register, to be conducted in opposition to the politics and criti- 
cism of Constable's Review. These tidings might have been 
enough to make Murray proceed farther northwards ; but there 
was a scheme of his own which had for some time deeply oc- 
cupied his mind, and the last article of this communication 
determined him to embrace the opportunity of opening it in 
person at Ashestiel. He arrived there about the middle of 
October. The 26th Number of the Edinburgh Beview, con- 
taining Mr. Brougham's article entitled " Don Cevallos on the 
usurpation of Spain," had just been published; and one of the 
first things Scott mentioned in conversation was, that he had 
so highly resented the tone of that essay, as to give orders 
that his name might be discontinued on the list of subscribers. 1 
Mr. Murray could not have wished better auspices for the 
matter he had come to open ; it was no other than the project 
of a London Beview on the scale of the Edinburgh ; and, for 
weeks ensuing, Scott's letters to Ellis, Morritt, and other liter- 
ary Tories, attest with what eager zeal he had embraced the 
new scheme. 

1 When the 26th Number appeared, Mr. Scott wrote to Constable in 
these terms : — "The Edinburgh Review had become such as to render 
it impossible for me to continue a contributor to it. — Now, it is such as 
I can no longer continue to receive or read it." The list of the then 
subscribers exhibits, in an indignant dash of Constable's pen opposite 
Mr. Scott's name, the word " Stopt ! ! I " — B. Cadell. 



COBBESP ONBENCE. 185 

It is impossible to include more than a fragment of this 
copious and curious correspondence in the present narrative ; 
but the first letter to Ellis (Nov. 2) seems to contain, in a few 
sentences, a sufficiently intelligible summary of his main views. 
He says : — " The present Ministry are not all that I could 
wish them — for (Canning excepted) I doubt there is among 
them too much self-seeking, as it was called in Cromwell's time ; 
and what is their misfortune, if not their fault, there is not 
among them one in the decided situation of paramount author- 
ity, both with respect to the others and to the Crown, which is, 
I think, necessary, at least in difficult times, to produce prompt- 
itude, regularity, and efficiency in measures of importance. 
But their political principles are sound English principles, and, 
compared to the greedy and inefficient horde which preceded 
them, they are angels of light and of purity. It is obvious, how- 
ever, that they want defenders both in and out doors. Pitt's 

' Love and fear glued many friends to him ; 

And now he's fallen, those tough commixtures melt.' x 

Were this only to affect a change of hands, I should expect it 
with more indifference ; but I fear a change of principles is 
designed. The Edinburgh Eeview tells you coolly, ' We fore- 
see a speedy revolution in this country, as well as Mr. Cobbett ; ' 
and, to say the truth, by degrading the person of the Sovereign 

— exalting the power of the French armies, and the wisdom of 
their counsels — holding forth that peace (which they allow 
can only be purchased by the humiliating prostration of our 
honour) is indispensable to the very existence of this country 

— I think, that for these two years past, they have done their 
utmost to hasten the accomplishment of their own prophecy. 
Of this work 9000 copies are printed quarterly, and no genteel 
family can pretend to be without it, because, independent of its 
politics, it gives the only valuable literary criticism which can 
be met with. Consider, of the numbers who read this work, 
how many are likely to separate the literature from the poli- 
tics — how many youths are there upon whose minds the flashy 
and bold character of the work is likely to make an indelible 
impression. Now, I think there is balm in Gilead for all this ; 
and that the cure lies in instituting such a Review in London 
as should be conducted totally independent of bookselling 
influence, on a plan as liberal as that of the Edinburgh, its 
literature as well supported, and its principles English and 

1 See 3d K. Henry IV. Act II. Scene 6. 



186 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

constitutional. Accordingly, I have been given to understand 
that Mr. William G-ifford is willing to become the conductor of 
such a work, and I have written to him a very voluminous 
letter on the subject. ~Now, should this plan succeed, you must 
hang your birding-piece on its hooks, take down your old Anti- 
Jacobin armour, and ' remember your swashing blow/ In 
point of learning, you Englishmen have ten times our scholar- 
ship ; and as for talent and genius, ' Are not Abana and Phar- 
par, rivers of Damascus, better than any of the rivers in 
Israel ? ' Have we not yourself and your cousin, the Boses, 
Malt hits, Matthias, Gilford, Heber, and his brother ? Can I 
not procure you a score of blue-caps, who would rather write 
for us than for the Edinburgh Eeview if they got as much pay 
by it ? ' A good plot, good friends, and full of expectation — an 
excellent plot, very good friends ! ' " 1 

The excellent plot had too many good friends to be long a 
secret ; nor could the rumours of Scott's share in it and other 
new schemes tend to soothe the irritation between him and the 
house of Constable. Something occurred before the end of 
1808 which induced Scott to suspect that among other sources 
of uneasiness had been a repentant grudge as to their bargain 
about Swift ; and on the 2d of January 1809, I find him re- 
questing, that if, on reflexion, they thought they had hastily 
committed themselves, the deed might be cancelled. To this 
the firm did not assent : their letter expresses regret that Scott 
should have attached importance to " an unguarded expression" 
of the junior partner, " our Mr. Hunter," and the hope that 
" the old footing may be restored hereafter, when the misrepre- 
sentations of interested persons may cease to be remembered." 
Scott replies coldly, requesting that a portrait for which he had 
sat to Eaeburn may be considered as done for himself, charged 
to his account, and sent to him. Mr. Constable declined, in 
very handsome terms, to give up the picture. But for the pres- 
ent the breach was complete. Among other negotiations which 
Scott had patronised twelve months before, was one concerning 
the publication of Miss Seward's Poems. On the 19th of March, 
he writes as follows to that lady : — " Constable, like many 
other folks who learn to undervalue the means by which they 
have risen, has behaved, or rather suffered his partner to be- 
have, very uncivilly towards me. But they may both live to 
know that they should not have kicked down the ladder till 
they were sure of their footing. The very last time I spoke to 
him on business was about your poems. I understood him to 

1 Hotspur — 1st K. Henry IV. Act II. Scene 3. 



THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 187 

decline your terms ; but I had neither influence to change his 
opinion, nor inclination to interfere with his resolution. He is 
a very enterprising, and, I believe, a thoroughly honest man, 
but his vanity in some cases overpowers his discretion." 

" Our Mr. Hunter " was, I am told by friends of mine who 
knew him well, a man of considerable intelligence and accom- 
plishments, to whose personal connexions the house of Consta- 
ble owed a great accession of business and influence. He was, 
however, a very keen politician — in Scott's phrase, "a sort of 
Whig gone mad; " — ■ regarded Scott's Toryism with a fixed bit- 
terness ; and, moreover, could never conceal his impression that 
Scott ought to have embarked in no other literary undertakings 
whatever until he had completed his edition of Swift. It is 
not Avonderful that, not having been bred regularly to the book- 
selling business, he should have somewhat misapprehended the 
obligation which Scott had incurred when the bargain for that 
work was made; and his feeling of his own station and conse- 
quence was no doubt such as to give his style of conversation, 
on doubtful questions of business, a tone for which Scott had 
not been prepared by his previous intercourse with Mr. Consta- 
ble. The defection of the poet was, however, at once regretted 
and resented by both these partners; and Constable, I am told, 
often vented his wrath in figures as lofty as Scott's own. " Ay, " 
he would say, stamping on the ground with a savage smile, 
"Ay, there is such a thing as rearing the oak until it can sup- 
port itself." 

The project of the Quarterly Eeview was not the only decla- 
ration of hostilities. The scheme of starting a new bookselling 
house in Edinburgh, begun in the short-sighted heat of pique, 
had now been matured; — I cannot add, either with composed 
observation or rational forecast — for it was ultimately settled 
that the ostensible and chief managing partner should be a 
person without capital, and neither by training nor by temper 
in the smallest degree qualified for such a situation; more es- 
pecially where the field was to be taken against long experience, 
consummate skill, and resources which, if not so large as all the 
world supposed them, were still in comparison vast, and admi- 
rably organised. The rash resolution was, however, carried 
into effect, and a deed, deposited for secrecy's sake in the hands 
of Scott, laid the foundation of the firm of " John Ballantyne 
& Co., booksellers, Edinburgh." Scott appears to have sup- 
plied all the capital, at any rate his own one-half share, and 
one-fourth, the portion of James, who, not having any funds to 
spare, must have become indebted to some one for it. It does 



188 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

not appear from what source John acquired his, the remaining 
fourth; but Rigdumfunnidos was thus installed in Hanover 
Street as the avowed rival of " The Crafty." 

This was arranged in January. Under the same month I 
must mention an event often alluded to in its correspondence : 
— the death of Camp, the first of several dogs whose names 
will be " freshly remembered " as long as their master's works 
are popular. This favourite preserved his affection and sagac- 
ity to the last. At Ashestiel, as the servant was laying the 
cloth for dinner, he would say, " Camp, my good fellow, the 
Sheriff's coming home by the ford — or by the hill ; " and 
the sick animal would immediately bestir himself to welcome 
his master, going out at the back door or the front door accord- 
ing to the direction given, and advancing as far as he was able, 
either towards the Tweed, or the Glenkinnon burn. He was 
buried on a fine moon-light night, in the little garden behind 
the house in Castle Street, immediately opposite to the window 
at which Scott usually sat writing. My wife told me that she 
remembered the whole family standing in tears about the grave, 
as her father himself smoothed down the turf above Camp with 
the saddest expression of face she had ever seen in him. He 
had been engaged to dine abroad that day, but apologised on 
account of " the death of a dear old friend ; " and Mr. Macdon- 
ald Buchanan was not at all surprised that he should have 
done so, when it came out next morning that Camp was no 
more. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

London — Theatrical Anecdotes — Byron's Satire — The Lady of the 
Lake — Excursion to the Hebrides — Vision of Don Roderick — 
Byron — Davy — Crabbe — Purchase of Abbotsford. 1809-1812. 

In February Mr. John Ballantyne proceeded to London, 
for the purpose of introducing himself to the chief publish- 
ers there in his new capacity, and especially of taking Mr. 
Murray's instructions respecting the Scotch management of 
the Quarterly Review. As soon as the spring vacation began, 
Mr. and Mrs. Scott followed him by sea. They stayed two 
months, and this being the first visit to town since his fame 
had been crowned by Marmion, he was more than ever the 
object of curiosity and attention. Mr. Morritt saw much of 
him, and I transcribe a few sentences from his Memoranda of 
the period. 

"Scott," his friend says, "more correctly than any other 
man I ever knew, appreciated the value of that apparently 
enthusiastic engouement which the world of London shews 
to the fashionable wonder of the year. The homage paid him 
neither altered his opinions, nor produced the affectation of de- 
spising it; on the contrary, he received it, cultivated it, and 
repaid it in its own coin. ' All this is very flattering,' he 
would say, 'and very civil; and if people are amused with 
hearing me tell a parcel of old stories, or recite a pack of 
ballads to lovely young girls and gaping matrons, they are 
easily pleased, and a man would be very ill-natured who 
would not give pleasure so cheaply conferred.' If he dined 
with us and found any new faces, t Well, do you want me to play 
lion to-day ? ' was his usual question — ' I will roar if you like 
it to your heart's content.' He would, indeed, in such cases put 
forth all his inimitable powers of entertainment — and day after 
day surprise me by their unexpected extent and variety. Then, 
as the party dwindled, and we were left alone, he laughed at 
himself, quoted — ' Yet know that I one Snug the joiner am 
— no lion fierce/ &c. — and was at once himself again. 

189 



190 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

"He often lamented the injurious effects for literature and 
genius resulting from the excitement of ambition for this 
ephemeral reputation du salon. 'It may be a pleasant gale 
to sail with/ he said, 'but it never yet led to a port that I 
should like to anchor in ; ' nor did he willingly endure, either 
in London or in Edinburgh, the little exclusive circles of 
literary society, much less their occasional fastidiousness and 
petty partialities. One story which I heard of him from Dr. 
Howley, now Archbishop of Canterbury (for I was not pres- 
ent), was very characteristic. The Doctor was one of a grand 
congregation of lions, where Scott and Coleridge, cum multis 
aliis, attended at Sotheby's. Poets and poetry were the topics 
of the table, and there was plentiful recitation of effusions 
as yet unpublished, which of course obtained abundant applause. 
Coleridge repeated more than one, which, as Dr. H. thought, 
were eulogised by some of the company with something like 
affectation, and a desire to humble Scott by raising a poet of 
inferior reputation on his shoulders. Scott, however, joined 
in the compliments as cordially as anybody, until, in his turn, 
he was invited to display some of his occasional poetry. Scott 
said he had nothing of his own worth their hearing, but he would 
repeat a little copy of verses which he had shortly before seen 
in a provincial newspaper, and which seemed to him almost 
as good as anything they had been listening to. He repeated 
Tire, Famine, and Slaughter.' The applauses that ensued 
were faint — then came slight criticisms, from which Scott 
defended the unknown author. At last a more bitter antag- 
onist opened, and fastening upon one line, cried, ' This at least 
is absolute nonsense.' Scott denied the charge — the Zoilus 
persisted — until Coleridge, out of all patience, exclaimed, Tor 
God's sake let Mr. Scott alone — I wrote the poem.' 

" He often complained of the dulness of parties where each 
guest arrived under the implied obligation of exhibiting some 
extraordinary powers of talk or wit. 'If,' he said, 'I encounter 
men of the world, men of business, odd or striking characters 
of professional excellence in any department, I am in my ele- 
ment, for they cannot lionise me without my returning the 
compliment and learning something from them.' He was 
much with George Ellis, Canning, and Croker, and delighted 
in them — as indeed who did not ? — but he loved to study 
eminence of every class and sort, and his rising fame gave him 
easy access to gratify all his curiosity." 

The meetings with Canning, Croker, and Ellis, to which 
Morritt alludes, were, as may be supposed, chiefly occupied 



BYRON'S SATIRE. 191 

with the affairs of the Quarterly Review. The first number 
appeared while Scott was in London: and contained three 
articles from his pen. 

On his way back to Scotland, he spent some days more with 
Morritt, at Rokeby Park, on the northern boundary of York- 
shire ; and he was so delighted by the scenery of the rivers Tees 
and Greta, which have their confluence within the demesne, 
and so interested with his host's traditionary anecdotes of 
the Cavaliers of the Rokeby lineage, that he resolved on 
connecting a poem with these fair landscapes. But he had 
already, I presume, begun the Lady of the Lake ; for, on his 
arrival at Edinburgh, he undertook that it should be finished by 
the end of the year. In July he revisited all the localities so 
dear to him in the days of his juvenile rambling, which he had 
chosen for the scene of his fable. He gave a week to Cambus- 
more, and ascertained, in his own person, that a good horse- 
man might gallop from Loch Vennachar to Stirling within the 
space allotted to Fitz-James. He then, under the guidance of 
Mr. Macdonald Buchanan, explored Loch Lomond, Arrochar, 
Loch Sloy, and all the scenery of a hundred conflicts between 
the Macfarlanes, the Colquhouns, and the Clan Alpine. At 
Buchanan House, which is very near Ross Priory, Lady 
Douglas and Lady Louisa Stuart were visiting the Duke of 
Montrose ; he joined them there, and read to them the Stag- 
Chase, which he had just completed under the full influence 
of the genius loci. 

It was at Buchanan that he first saw Lord Byron's Eng- 
lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers. I need not reprint here 
what he says in an essay in 1830, on his " share in the flagel- 
lation of that famous satire," viz. — 

Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan, 
The golden-crested haughty Marmion — 

down to 

For this we spurn Apollo's venal son, 
And bid a long good-night to Marmion. 

But it is amusing enough to contrast with that graceful " Intro- 
duction " the plain words of a letter to Southey, written in 
August 1809. He there says : — " If I were once in possession 
of my reversionary income, I would do nothing but what I 
pleased, which might be another phrase for doing very little. 
I was always an admirer of the modest wish of a retainer in 
one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays — 



192 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

' 1 would not be a serving man, to carry the cloak-bag still, 
Nor would I be a falconer, the greedy hawks to fill ; 
But I would be in a good house, and have a good master too, 
For I would eat and drink of the best, and no work would I do.' 1 

In the meantime, it is funny enough to see a whelp of a young 
Lord Byron abusing me, of whose circumstances he knows 
nothing, for endeavouring to scratch out a living with my 
pen. God help the bear, if, having little else to eat, he must 
not even suck his own paws. I can assure the noble imp of 
fame it is not my fault that I was not born to a park and 
L.5000 a year, as it is not his lordship's merit, although it may 
be his great good fortune, that he was not born to live by his 
literary talents or success." 

About this time several travesties of Scott's poetry, I do 
not recollect by whom, were favourably noticed in some of the 
minor reviews, and appear to have annoyed Mr. Morritt. 
Scott's only remark on the Lay of the Scotch Fiddle, &c. &c. 
is in a very miscellaneous letter to that frieDd : — "As to those 
terrible parodies which have come forth, I can only say with 
Benedict, A college of such witmongers cannot flout me out of my 
humour. Had I been conscious of one place about my temper, 
were it even, metaphorically speaking, the tip of my heel, 
vulnerable to this sort of aggression, I have that respect for 
mine own ease, that I would have shunned being a candidate 
for public applause, as I would avoid snatching a honey-comb 
from among a hive of live bees." When, three years later, all 
the world laughed over James Smith's really admirable Death 
of Clutterbuck, in the Rejected Addresses, no one laughed 
more heartily than the author of Marmion. 

To this period belong two stories, which it would be unfair 
to suppress. It is a rare case when a large family does not 
include a frail member. Walter Scott's youngest brother 
Daniel was such. 2 After many luckless adventures, he obtained, 
through the poet's connexion with George Ellis, a post of 
responsibility on a West -Indian estate ; but in a moment of 
danger, his nerves shewed the effects of continued dissipation. 
He was dismissed, and died soon afterwards at Edinburgh, under 
his mother's roof — but his brother would never see him, nor 
would he attend his funeral, or wear mourning for him. Thus 
sternly, when in the height and pride of his blood, could Scott, 
whose heart was never hardened against the distress of an enemy, 

1 The Knight of the Burning Pestle. 

2 See Chap. I., ante, p. 9. 



ANECDOTES OF HIS BROTHERS. 193 

recoil from the disgrace of a brother. It is a more pleasing 
part of my duty to add, that he spoke to me, twenty years 
afterwards, in terms of great and painful contrition for the 
austerity with which he had conducted himself on this occasion. 
I must add, moreover, that he took a warm interest in a natural 
child whom Daniel had bequeathed to his mother's care; and 
after the old lady's death, religiously supplied her place as the 
boy's protector. 

The other story is connected with his ever dear brother 
Thomas, in whose hands, as has been mentioned above, the 
business that he inherited did not prosper. Walter, as Clerk 
of Session, had the patronage of several offices in the Register 
House at Edinburgh, and he appointed Thomas to one of these, 
by no means so lucrative as others at his disposal, but welcome 
under the circumstances. Thomas soon after found it con- 
venient to withdraw for a time to the Isle of Man ; and while 
he was there, the Government introduced a bill, by which his 
extractor ship, and many other little places of the sort, were to 
be abolished, the holders receiving some compensation by way 
of annuity. Some keen Edinburgh partisans suggested to the 
Earl of Lauderdale (then at the head of the Whig interest in 
Scotland) that Walter Scott had foreseen the abolition of the 
post when he bestowed it on Thomas — that Thomas was dis- 
charging its small duties by deputy — and that in his case 
compensation would be only the successful crowning of a job. 
Scott, in his letters to friends, both Whig and Tory, denies 
indignantly that either he or Thomas had anticipated the 
abolition of the office, and intimates his conviction that the 
parliamentary opposition to the compensation sprang entirely 
•from the wish to hurt his own feelings. Lord Lauderdale's 
amendment was lost in the House of Peers. Indeed no other 
Peer spoke in favour of it except Lord Holland 5 and Scott 
resented that speech warmly, because his Lordship seemed to 
have " gone out of his way " in meddling about a small Scotch 
matter. It happened unluckily that Lord Holland visited 
Edinburgh within a few weeks afterwards, and he was then 
introduced by Scott's friend, Mr. Thomas Thomson, at a din- 
ner of the Friday Club} The poet, in a letter to his brother, 
says : " We met accidentally at a public party. He made up to 
me, but I remembered his part in your affair, and cut him with 

1 Tlie Friday Club was instituted in June 1803 — on the model, I be- 
lieve, of Johnson's at the Turk's Head. Scott, Thomson, and most of 
their intimates at the Bar were original members. The great majority 
were Whigs. They dined at Fortune's tavern, 
o 



194 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

as little remorse as an old pen." Two gentlemen who were 
present, inform me that they distinctly remember a very painful 
scene, for which, knowing Scott's habitual good-nature and 
urbanity, they had been wholly unprepared. One of them 
(Lord Jeffrey) adds, that this was the only example of rudeness 
he ever witnessed in him in the course of a lifelong familiarity. 
It is consolatory to add, that he enjoyed much agreeable inter- 
course in after days with Lord Holland. 

I willingly turn from these dregs of politics to some other 
matters, which about this time occupied a large share of his 
thoughts. He had from his boyish days a great love for theat- 
rical representation; and so soon as circumstances enabled him 
to practise extended hospitality, the chief actors of his time, 
whenever they happened to be in Scotland, were among the 
most acceptable of his guests. Mr. Charles Young was, I be- 
lieve, the first of them of whom he saw much : as early as 1803 
I find him writing of that gentleman to the Marchioness of 
Abercorn as a valuable addition to the society of Edinburgh; 
and down to the end of Scott's life, Mr. Young was never in 
the north without visiting him. Another graceful performer, 
of whom he saw a great deal in his private circle, was Miss 
Smith, afterwards Mrs. Bartley. But at the period of which 
I am now treating, his principal theatrical intimacy was with 
John Philip Kemble, and his sister Mrs. Siddons, both of 
whom he appears to have often met at Lord Abercorn's villa 
near Stanmore. Of John Kemble's character and manners, 
he has recorded his impressions in a pleasing reviewal of Mr. 
Boaden's Memoir. The great tragedian's love of black-letter 
learning afforded a strong bond of fellowship; and I have 
heard Scott say that the only man who ever seduced him into 
very deep potations in his middle life was Kemble. He was 
frequently at Ashestiel, and a grave butler, by name John 
Macbeth, made sore complaints of the bad hours kept on such 
occasions in one of the most regular of households; but the 
watchings of the night were not more grievous to " Cousin 
Macbeth," as Kemble called the honest beauffetier, than were 
the hazards and fatigues of the morning to the representative 
of "the Scotch usurper." Kemble's miseries during a rough 
gallop were quite as grotesque as those of his namesake, and 
it must be owned that species of distress was one from the 
contemplation of which his host could never derive anything 
but amusement. 

I have heard Scott chuckle with particular glee over the 
recollection of an excursion to the vale of the Ettrick, near 



THEATRICAL ANECDOTES. 195 

which river the party were pursued by a bull. " Come, King 
John/' said he, " we must even take the water ; " and accord- 
ingly he and his daughter Sophia plunged into the stream. 
But King John, halting on the bank, and surveying the river, 
which happened to be full and turbid, exclaimed, in his usual 
solemn manner, 

" The flood is angry, Sheriff ; 

Methinks I'll get me up into a tree." 1 

It was well that the dogs had succeeded in diverting the bull, 
because there was no tree at hand which could have sustained 
King John, nor, had that been otherwise, could so stately a 
personage have dismounted and ascended with such alacrity as 
circumstances would have required. He at length followed 
his friends through the river with the rueful dignity of Don 
Quixote. 

It was this intercourse which led Scott to exert himself 
strenuously about 1809, to prevail on Mr. Henry Siddons, the 
nephew of Kemble, to undertake the lease and management 
of the Edinburgh Theatre. On this occasion he purchased 
a share, and became one of the acting trustees ; and thence- 
forth, during a long series of years, he continued to take a 
very lively concern in the proceedings of the Edinburgh com- 
pany. In this he was plentifully encouraged by his domestic 
camarilla; for his wife had all a Frenchwoman's passion for 
the spectacle; and the elder Ballantyne was a regular news- 
paper critic of theatrical affairs, and in that capacity had 
already attained a measure of authority supremely gratifying 
to himself. 

The first new play produced by Henry Siddons was the 
Family Legend of Joanna Baillie. This was, I believe, the 
first of her dramas that ever underwent the test of representa- 
tion in her native kingdom ; and Scott exerted himself most 
indefatigably in its behalf. He was consulted about all the 
minutiae of costume, attended every rehearsal, and supplied 
the prologue. The play was better received than any other 

1 John Kemble's most familiar table-talk often flowed into blank verse ; 
and so indeed did his sister's. Scott (who was a capital mimic) often re- 
peated her tragic exclamation to a f ootboy during a dinner at Ashestiel — 

" You've brought me water, boy — I ask'd for beer." 

Another time, dining with a Provost of Edinburgh, she ejaculated, in 
answer to her host's apology for his piece de resistance — 

" Beef cannot be too salt for ine, my Lord ! " 



196 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

which the gifted authoress has since subjected to the same 
experiment; and how ardently Scott enjoyed its success may 
be seen in many letters which he addressed to his friend on 
the occasion. 

It was at a rehearsal of this piece that Scott was first intro- 
duced to another theatrical performer — who ere long acquired 
a large share of Ms regard and confidence — Mr. Daniel Terry. 
He had received a good education, and been regularly trained 
as an architect; but abandoned that profession at an early 
period of life, and was now beginning to attract attention as. 
a valuable actor in Henry Siddons's company. Already he and 
the Ballantynes were constant companions, and through his 
familiarity with them, Scott had abundant opportunities of 
appreciating his many excellent and agreeable qualities. He 
had the manners and feelings of a gentleman. Like John 
Kemble, he was deeply skilled in the old literature of the 
drama, and he rivalled Scott's own enthusiasm for the antiqui- 
ties of vertu. Their epistolary correspondence in after days 
was frequent, and none so well illustrates many of the poet's 
minor tastes and habits. As their letters lie before me, they 
appear as if they had all been penned by the same hand. 
Terry's idolatry of his new friend induced him to imitate his 
writing so zealously, that Scott used to say, if he were called 
on to swear to any document, the utmost he could venture 
to attest would be, that it was either in his own hand or in 
Terry's. The actor, perhaps unconsciously, mimicked him in 
other matters with hardly inferior pertinacity. His small 
lively features had acquired, before I knew him, a truly ludi- 
crous cast of Scott's graver expression ; he had taught his tiny 
eyebrow the very trick of the poet's meditative frown ; and to 
crown all, he so habitually affected his tone and accent, that, 
though a native of Bath, a stranger could hardly have doubted 
he must be a Scotchman. These things afforded all their 
acquaintance much, diversion; but perhaps no Stoic could 
have helped being secretly gratified by seeing a clever and 
sensible man convert himself into a living type and symbol 
of admiration. 

Charles Mathews and Terry were once thrown out of a gig 
together, and the former received an injury which made him 
halt ever afterwards, while the latter escaped unhurt. "Dooms, 
Dauniel" said Mathews when they next met, "what a pity 
that it wasna your luck to get the game leg, mon ! Your 
Slrirra would hae been the very thing, ye ken, an' ye wad hae 
been croose till ye war coffined ! " Terry, though he did not 



THEATRICAL ANECDOTES. 197 

always relish bantering on this subject, replied readily and 
good-humour edly by a quotation from Peter Pindar's Bozzy 
and Piozzi: — 

" When Foote his leg by some misfortune broke, 
Says I to Johnson, all by way of joke, 
Sam,- sir, in Paragraph will soon be clever, 
He'll take off Peter better now than ever." 

Mathews's mirthful caricature of Terry's sober mimicry of 
Scott was one of the richest extravaganzas of his social hours ; 
but indeed I have often seen this Proteus dramatise the whole 
Ballantyne group with equal success — while Rigdumfunnidos 
screamed with delight, and Aldiborontiphoscophornio faintly 
chuckled, and the Sheriff, gently smiling, pushed round his 
decanters. 1 

Scott had by the end of 1809 all but completed his third 
great poem; yet this year also was crowded with miscellaneous 
literary labours. In it he made great progress with Swift, and 
in it he finished and saw published his edition of the Sadler 
Papers ; the notes copious, curious, lively and entertaining, 
and the Life of Sir Ralph a very pleasing specimen of his 
style. Several volumes of the huge Somers' Collection, illus- 
trated throughout with similar care, were also issued in 1809 ; 
and I suppose he received his fee for each volume as it appeared 
— the whole sum amounting, when the last came out in 1812, 
to 1300 guineas. His labours on these collections were gradu- 
ally storing his mind with that minute knowledge of the lead- 
ing persons and events both of Scotch and English history, 
which made his conversation on such subjects that of one who 
had rather lived with than read about the departed. He 
delighted in them, and never complained that they interrupted 
disadvantageously the works of his higher genius. But he 
submitted to many less agreeable tasks — among others, at this 
same period, to a good deal of trouble entailed on him by the 
will of Miss Seward. Dying in March 1809, she bequeathed 
her poetry to Scott, with an injunction to publish it speedily, 
and prefix a sketch of her life ; while she made her letters (of 
which she had kept copies) the property of Constable. Scott 

1 Perhaps the very richest article in Mathews's social budget, was the 
scene alleged to have occurred when he himself communicated to the two 
Ballantynes the new titles which the Sheriff had conferred on them. 
Rigdum's satisfaction with his own cap and bells, and the other's indig- 
nant incredulity, passing by degrees into tragical horror, made, I am 
told, a delicious contrast. 



198 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

superintended, accordingly, the edition of the lady's verses 
which was published in three volumes by John Ballantyne ; 
and Constable lost no time in announcing her correspondence 
— an announcement which the poet observed with trepidation ; 
for few had suffered more than himself from her epistolary 
restlessness. He says to an authoress of a different breed 
(Miss Baillie) — " The despair which I used to feel on receiv- 
ing poor Miss Seward's letters, whom I really liked, gave me a 
most unsentimental horror for sentimental letters. I am now 
doing penance for my ill-breeding, by submitting to edit her 
posthumous poetry, most of which is absolutely execrable. 
This, however, is the least of my evils, for when she proposed 
this bequest to me, which I could not in decency refuse, she 
combined it with a request that I would publish her whole 
literary correspondence. This I declined on principle, having 
a particular aversion at perpetuating that sort of gossip ; but 
what availed it ? Lo ! to ensure the publication, she left it to 
an Edinburgh bookseller ; and I anticipate the horror of seeing 
myself advertised for a live poet like a wild beast on a painted 
streamer ; for I understand all her friends are depicted therein 
in body, mind, and manners." Mr. Constable, however, took 
this opportunity of re-opening his intercourse with Scott, and 
gave him essential relief by allowing him to draw his pen 
through Miss Seward's extravagant eulogies on himself and 
his poetry. This attention so gratified him, that he author- 
ised John Ballantyne to ask, in his name, that experienced 
bookseller's advice respecting the poem now nearly completed, 
the amount of the first impression, and other professional 
details. Mr. Constable readily gave the assistance thus re- 
quested, and would willingly have taken any share they pleased 
in the adventure. They had completed their copyright arrange- 
ments before these communications occurred, and the trium- 
phant success of the coup d'essai of the new firm was sufficient 
to close Scott's ears for a season against any propositions of 
the like kind from the house at the Cross ; but from this time 
there was no return of anything like personal ill-will between 
the parties. 

Early in May the Lady of the Lake came out — as her two 
elder sisters had done — in all the majesty of quarto, with 
every accompanying grace of typography, and with moreover 
an engraved frontispiece of Saxon's portrait of Scott; the 
price of the book two guineas. Eor the copyright the poet 
had nominally received 2000 guineas, but as John Ballantyne 
and Co. retained three-fourths of the property to themselves 



THE LADY OF THE LAKE. 199 

(Miller of London purchasing the other fourth), the author's 
profits Were, or should have been, more than this. 

Mr. Cadell, the publisher of this Memoir, then a young man 
in training for his profession, retains a strong impression of 
the interest which the quarto excited before it was on the 
counter. " James Ballantyne," he says, " read the cantos 
from time to time to select coteries, as they advanced at press. 
Common fame was loud in their favour ; a great poem was on 
all hands anticipated. I do not recollect that any of all the 
author's works was ever looked for with more intense anxiety, 
or that any one of them excited a more extraordinary sensation 
when it did appear. The whole country rang with the praises 
of the poet — crowds set off to view the scenery of Loch 
Katrine, till then comparatively unknown; and as the book 
came out just before the season for excursions, every house 
and inn in that neighbourhood was crammed with a constant 
succession of visitors. It is a well-ascertained fact, that from 
the date of the publication of the Lady of the Lake, the post- 
horse duty in Scotland rose in an extraordinary degree, and 
indeed it continued to do so regularly for a number of years, 
the author's succeeding works keeping up the enthusiasm for 
our scenery which he had thus originally created." — Mr. 
Cadell adds, that four 8vo editions followed the quarto within 
the space of twelve months ; that these carried the early sale 
to 20,000 copies ; and that by July 1836, the legitimate sale 
in Great Britain had been not less than 50,000 copies ; since 
which date I understand that, in spite of legal and illegal 
piracies, the fair demand has been well kept up. 

In their reception of this work, the critics were for once 
in full harmony with each other, and with the popular voice. 
The article in the Quarterly was written by George Ellis ; 
but its eulogies, though less discriminative, are not a whit 
more emphatic than those of Mr. Jeffrey in the rival Review. 
Indeed, I have always considered this last paper as the best 
specimen of contemporary criticism on Scott's poetry. The 
Lay, if I may venture to state the creed now established, is, 
I should say, generally considered as the most natural and 
original, Marmion as the most powerful and splendid, the 
Lady of the Lake as the most interesting, romantic, pictur- 
esque, and graceful of his great poems. 

Of its success he speaks as follows in 1830 : — "It was cer- 
tainly so extraordinary as to induce me for the moment to 
conclude that I had at last fixed a nail in the proverbially 
inconstant wheel of Fortune. But, as the celebrated John 



200 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Wilkes is said to have explained to King George the Third, 
that he himself was never a Wilkite, so I can with honest truth 
exculpate myself from having been at any time a partisan of 
my own poetry, even when it was in the highest fashion with 
the "million." 

James Ballantyne has preserved in his Memorandum an 
anecdote strikingly confirmative of the most remarkable state- 
ment in this page of Scott's confessions. "I remember," he 
says, " going into his library shortly after the publication of 
the Lady of the Lake, and finding Miss Scott (who was then a 
very young girl) there by herself, I asked her — ' Well, Miss 
Sophia, how do you like the Lady of the Lake ? ' Her answer 
was given with perfect simplicity — ' Oh, I have not read it : 
papa says there's nothing so bad for young people as reading 
bad poetry.' " 

In fact, his children in those days had no idea of the source 
of his distinction — or rather, indeed, that his position was in 
any respect different from that of other Advocates, Sheriffs, 
and Clerks of Session. The eldest boy came home one after- 
noon about this time from the High School, with tears and 
blood hardened together upon his cheeks. — " Well, Wat," said 
his father, "what have you been fighting about to-day ? " With 
that the boy blushed and hung his head, and at last stammered 
out — that he had been called a lassie. " Indeed ! " said Mrs. 
Scott, "this was a terrible mischief to be sure." "You may 
say what you please, mamma," Wat answered roughly, " but I 
dinna think there's a ivaufer (shabbier) thing in the world than 
to be a lassie, to sit boring at a clout." Upon further inquiry 
it turned out that one or two of his companions had dubbed 
him The Lady of the Lake, and the phrase was to him incom- 
prehensible, save as conveying some imputation on his prowess, 
which he accordingly vindicated in the usual style of the Yards. 
Of the poem he had never before heard. Shortly after, this 
story having got wind, one of Scott's colleagues of the Clerks' 
Table said to the boy — (who was in the home circle called 
Gilnockie, from his admiration of Johnny Armstrong) — " Gil- 
nockie, my man, you cannot surely help seeing that great people 
make more work about your papa than they do about me or 
any other of your uncles — what is it do you suppose that occa- 
sions this ? " The little fellow pondered for a minute or two, 
and then answered very gravely — "It's commonly him that 
sees the hare sitting." And yet this was the man that had 
his children all along so very much with him. In truth, how- 
ever, young Walter had guessed pretty shrewdly in the matter, 



THE LADY OF THE LAKE. 201 

for his father had all the tact of the Sutherland Highlander, 
whose detection of an Irish rebel up to the neck in a bog, he 
has commemorated in a note upon Rokeby. Like him, he was 
quick to catch the sparkle of the victim's eye ; and often said 
jestingly of himself, that whatever might be thought of him 
as a maker (poet), he was an excellent trouveur. 

Ballantyne adds : — " One day about this same time, when 
his fame was supposed to have reached its acme, I said to him 

— 'Will you excuse me, Mr. Scott, but I should like to ask 
you what you think of your own genius as a poet, in compari- 
son with that of Burns? ' He replied — ' There is no com- 
parison whatever — we ought not to be named in the same 
day.' 'Indeed!' I answered, 'would you compare Campbell to 
Burns?' 'No, James, not at all — If you wish to speak of a 
real poet, Joanna Baillie is now the highest genius of our coun- 
try.' — But, in fact," (continues Ballantyne) — "he had often 
said to me that neither his own nor any modern popular style 
of composition was that from which he derived most pleasure. 
I asked him what it was. He answered — Johnson's ; and 
that he had more pleasure in reading London, and The Vanity 
of Human Wishes, than any other poetical composition he 
could mention ; and I think I never saw his countenance more 
indicative of high admiration than while reciting aloud from 
those productions." 

In his sketch of Johnson's Life, Scott says — "The deep 
and pathetic morality of The Vanity of Human Wishes, has 
often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over 
pages professedly sentimental." The last line of MS. that he 
sent to the press was a quotation from the same piece. Yet 
it is the cant of our day — above all, of its poetasters, that 
Johnson was no poet. To be sure, they say the same of Pope 

— and hint it occasionally even of Dryden. 

Walter Scott was at this epoch' in the highest spirits, and 
having strong reasons of various kinds for his resolution to 
avail himself of the gale of favour, only hesitated in which 
quarter to explore the materials of some new romance. His 
first and most earnest desire was "to take a peep at Lord 
Wellington and his merrymen in the Peninsula, — where," he 
says, " I daresay I should have picked up some good materials 
for battle scenery ; " and he afterwards writes with envy of the 
way in which a young barrister of his acquaintance (the late 
excellent John Miller of Lincoln's Inn, K.C.,) spent the long 
vacation of that year — having the good luck to arrive at Oporto 
when our army was in retreat from the frontier, and after 



202 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

travelling through a country totally deserted, to hear suddenly, 
in a low glen, the distant sound of a bagpipe — be welcomed 
by the officers of a Highland Regiment — and next day witness 
(rifle in hand) the Battle of Busaco. But Scott dropt his Pen- 
insular plan on perceiving that it gave his wife " more distress 
than could be compensated by any gratification of his own 
curiosity." He then thought of revisiting B-okeby — for, as 
was mentioned already, he had from the first day that he spent 
there designed to connect its localities with his verse. But 
the burst of enthusiasm which followed the appearance of the 
Lady of the Lake finally swayed him to undertake a journey, 
deeper than he had as yet gone, into the Highlands, and a warm 
invitation from the Laird of Staff a, easily induced him to add 
a voyage to the Hebrides. He was accompanied by his wife, 
his daughter Sophia, Miss Hannah Mackenzie, daughter of 
"The Man of Feeling," and a dear friend and distant relation, 
Mrs. Apreece (now Lady Davy), who had been, as he says in 
one of his letters, " a lioness of the first magnitude in Edin- 
burgh," during the preceding winter. He travelled slowly 
with his own horses, through Argyleshire, as far as Oban ; but 
even where post-horses might have been had, this was the 
mode he always preferred in these family excursions, for he 
delighted in the liberty it afforded him of alighting and linger- 
ing as often and as long as he chose ; and, in truth, he often 
performed the far greater part of the day's journey on foot 
— examining the map in the morning so as to make himself 
master of the bearings — and following his own fancy over 
some old disused riding track, or along the margin of a stream, 
while the carriage, with its female occupants, adhered to the 
proper road. Of the insular part of the expedition we have 
many details in the appendages to the Lord of the Isles — and 
others not less interesting in the Notes which he contributed 
to Croker's Edition of Boswell. The private letters of 1810 
dwell with delight on a scene which it was, indeed, special 
good fortune for him to witness: — the arrival among the 
Mackinnons of their young chief (since well known as M.P. 
for Lymington), whose ancestors had sold or forfeited their 
insular territory, but could not alienate the affectionate venera- 
tion of their clan. He also expatiates with hearty satisfaction 
on the patriarchal style of the hospitality of Mulva, where the 
Laird of Staffa (a brother of his colleague Mr. Macdonald 
Buchanan) lived among " a people distractedly fond of him," 
cheered by their adherence to the native soil from which so 
many of the neighbouring tribes were yearly emigrating, 



EXCURSION TO THE HEBRIDES. 203 

proudly and hopefully encouraging their growth in numbers, 
and doing whatever he could to keep up the old manners and 
the old spirit of his region — "his people doubled and his 
income trebled." But this is a picture to which we cannot 
now revert without pain and regret ; for changes in public 
polity within a few years destroyed utterly the ease and pros- 
perity which the poet witnessed. Like so many others of his 
class, that gay and high-spirited gentleman was destined to 
see his fond people pine around him in destitution, until the 
majority of them also took refuge beyond the Atlantic, — and 
there was left to himself only the name and shadow of that 
fair possession, of which, on his death, the last fragment — the 
rocky Staffa itself, — had to be parted with by his children. 

On returning from this pleasant expedition, and establish- 
ing himself at Ashestiel, Scott, in searching an old desk for 
fishing-flies one morning, found the forgotten MS. of the first 
two or three chapters of Waverley. Erom a letter of James 
Ballantyne's on now reading these chapters, it is plain that 
he was not their unfavourable critic of 1805 ; but though he 
augured " success " if the novel were completed, he added that 
he could not say "how much," and honestly confessed that 
the impression made on his mind was far from resembling 
that he had received from the first specimen of the Lady of 
the Lake : and once more the fated MS. was restored to its 
hiding-place. But this was not the only unwelcome communi- 
cation from that quarter. Already their publishing adventure 
began to wear a bad aspect. Between 1805 and the Christmas 
of 1809, Scott invested in the Ballantyne firms not less than 
L.9000 ; by this time probably there had been a farther 
demand on his purse ; and now the printer's triumph in the 
fast multiplying editions of the Lady of the Lake was dark- 
ened with ominous reports about their miscellaneous specula- 
tions — such as the Beaumont and Fletcher of Weber — the 
"Tixall Poetry," — and the History of the Culdees by Dr. 
Jamieson. But a still more serious business was the Edin- 
burgh Annual Register. Its two first volumes were issued 
about this time, and expectation had been highly excited by 
the announcement that the historical department was in the 
hands of Southey, while Scott and other eminent persons were 
to contribute to its miscellaneous literature and science. Mr. 
Southey was fortunate in beginning his narrative with the 
great era of the Spanish Eevolt against Napoleon, and it 
exhibited his usual research, reflection, elegance, and spirit. 
The second volume contained some of his most admired minor 



204 LIFE OF SIP, WALTER SCOTT. 

poems ; and Scott enriched it both with verse and prose. 
Nevertheless, the public were alarmed by the extent of the 
history, and the prospect of two volumes annually. This 
was, in short, a new periodical publication on a large scale ; 
all such adventures are hazardous ; none of them can succeed, 
unless there be a skilful bookseller, and a zealous editor, who 
give a large share of their industry and intelligence, day after 
day, to its arrangements. Such a bookseller John Ballantyne 
was not ; such an editor, with Scott's multifarious engage- 
ments, he could not be. The volumes succeeded each other 
at irregular intervals ; there was soon felt the want of one 
ever active presiding spirit ; and though the work was con- 
tinued during a long series of years, it never profited the 
projectors. 

The first livraison included an essay of some length by 
Scott on the proposed changes in the Scotch law and judica- 
ture, which had occupied Sir Hay Campbell's Commission: 
and the sagacity of this piece appears as creditable to him 
as the clear felicity of its language. I fancy few English 
lawyers will now deny that their criminal system at least had 
more need to borrow from Scotland, than hers from theirs. 
However, his essay strongly deprecated the commencement 
of a general innovation ; and though the condition of the Bal- 
lantyne affairs was already uneasy, and his correspondence 
shews that he fretted occasionally under the unrecompensed 
drudgery of his clerkship, still I cannot but suspect that his 
repugnance to these legal novelties had a share in producing 
the state of mind indicated by a letter of November 1810 to 
his brother Thomas. He there says: "I have no objection 
to tell you in confidence, that, were Dundas to go out Gov- 
ernor-General to India, and were he willing to take me with 
him in a good situation, I would not hesitate to pitch the 
Court of Session and the booksellers to the Devil, and try my 
fortune in another climate." He adds, " but this is strictly 
entre nous " — nor indeed was I aware, until I found this let- 
ter, tha/t he had ever entertained such a design as that which 
it communicates. Mr. Dundas (now Lord Melville) being 
highly acceptable to the Court of Directors in the office of 
President of the Board of Control, which he long filled, was 
spoken of at various times as likely i;o be appointed Governor- 
General. He had no doubt hinted to Scott, that in case he 
should ever assume that station, it would be agreeable for 
him to be accompanied by his early friend : and there could 
be little question of Scott's capacity to have filled with dis- 



VISION OF DON RODERICK. 205 

tinction the part either of an Indian secretary or of an Indian 
judge. Bnt enough of what was but a passing dream. The 
buoyancy of his temperament had sustained no lasting depres- 
sion — and his circumstances before the lapse of another year 
underwent a change which for ever fixed his destiny to the 
soil of his best affections and happiest inspirations. 

Meantime, unflagging was the interest with which, among 
whatever labours and anxieties, he watched the progress of 
the great contest in the Peninsula. It was so earnest, that he 
never on any journey, not even in his very frequent passages 
between Edinburgh and Ashestiel, omitted to take with him 
the largest and best map he had been able to procure of the 
seat of war ; upon this he was perpetually poring, tracing the 
marches and countermarches of the French and English by 
means of black and white pins; and not seldom did Mrs. 
Scott complain of this constant occupation of his attention 
and her carriage. In the beginning of 1811, a committee was 
formed in London to collect subscriptions for the relief of the 
Portuguese, who had seen their lands wasted and their houses 
burnt in the course of Massena's last campaign ; and Scott, on 
reading the advertisement, addressed the chairman, begging 
to contribute the profits, to whatever they might amount, of 
the first edition of a poem connected with the localities of the 
patriotic struggle. His offer was accepted. The Vision of 
Don Roderick was published, in 4to, in July ; and the money 
forwarded to the board. Lord Dalkeith writes thus : — " Those 
with ample fortunes and thicker heads may easily give 100 
guineas to a subscription, but the man is really to be envied 
who can draw that sum from his own brains, and apply the 
produce to so exalted a purpose." 

The Vision had features of novelty, both as to the subject 
and the manner of the composition, which gave rise to some 
sharp controversy. The main fable was indeed from the most 
picturesque region of old romance ; but it was made through- 
out the vehicle of feelings directly adverse to those with 
which the Whig critics had all along regarded the interference 
of Britain in behalf of the nations of the Peninsula ; and the 
silence which, while celebrating our other generals on that 
scene of action, had been preserved with respect to Scott's 
own gallant countryman,. Sir John Moore, was considered or 
represented by them as an odious example of genius hood- 
winked by the influence of party. Nor were there wanting 
persons who affected to discover that the charm of Scott's 
poetry had to a great extent evaporated under the severe test 



206 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

to which he had exposed it, by adopting, in place of those 
comparatively light and easy measures in which he had 
hitherto dealt, the most elaborate one that our literature ex- 
hibits. The piece, notwithstanding the complexity of the 
Spenserian stanza, had been very rapidly executed; and it 
shews, accordingly, many traces of negligence. But the patri- 
otic inspiration of it found an echo in the vast majority of 
British hearts ; many of the Whig oracles themselves acknowl- 
edged that the difficulties of the metre had been on the whole 
successfully overcome ; and even the hardest critics were com- 
pelled to express unqualified admiration of various detached 
pictures and passages, which, in truth, as no one now disputes, 
neither he nor any other poet ever excelled. The whole set- 
ting or framework — whatever relates to the Last of the Goths 
himself — was, I think, even then unanimously pronounced 
admirable ; and no party feeling could blind any man to the 
heroic splendour of such stanzas as those in which the three 
equally gallant elements of a British army are contrasted. 
I incline to believe that the choice of the measure had been 
in no small degree the result of hints from more than one 
friendly critic on the subject of his favourite octosyllabics. 
Of the letters addressed to him soon after the Vision ap- 
peared, he has preserved several which had no doubt interested 
and gratified him at the time. But I am very sure no one was 
so welcome as that which reached him, some months after his 
poem had ceased to be new in England, from a dear friend 
who, after various chances and changes, was then serving as 
a captain in the 58th regiment. " Last spring," says he (Lis- 
bon, Aug. 31), " I was so fortunate as to get a reading of the 
Lady of the Lake, when in the lines of Torres Vedras, and 
thought I had no inconsiderable right to enter into and judge 
of its beauties, having made one of the party on your first 
visit to the Trossachs. While the book was in my posses- 
sion, I had nightly invitations to evening parties! and I must 
say that (though not conscious of much merit in the way of 
recitation) my attempts to do justice to the grand opening of 
the stag-hunt were always followed with bursts of applause — 
for this Canto was the favourite among the rough sons of the 
fighting Third Division. At that time supplies of various kinds 
were scanty ; — and, in gratitude, I am bound to declare that to 
the good offices of the Lady I owed many a nice slice of ham 
and rummer of hot punch." The gallant and gastronomical 
Captain (now Sir Adam) Eergusson (who did not by the bye 
escape suspicions of having been a little glanced at in Dalgetty) 



VISION OF DON RODERICK. 207 

was no less heartily regaled on the arrival of The Vision " ex 
dono auctoris" He again writes (6th October), "I relished 
much the wild and fanciful opening of the introductory part ; 
yet what particularly delighted me were the stanzas announc- 
ing the approach of the British fleets and armies ; and I can 
assure you the Pats are, to a man, enchanted with the picture 
drawn of their countrymen, and the mention of the great 
man himself. Your swearing, in the true character of a min- 
strel, ' shiver my harp, and burst its every chord,' amused me 
not a little. — Should it be my fate to survive, I am resolved 
to try my hand on a snug little farm either up or down the 
Tweed, somewhere in your neighbourhood ; and on this dream 
many a delightful castle do I build." At least one of the 
knight's chateaux en Espagne was, as we shall see, realised in 
the sequel. I must not omit a circumstance which Scott learned 
from another source, and which he always took special pride in 
relating. In the course of the day when the Lady of the Lake 
first reached Fergusson, he was posted with his company on a 
point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery. The men 
were ordered to lie prostrate on the ground ; while they kept 
that attitude, the Captain, kneeling at their head, read aloud 
the battle of Canto VI., and the listening soldiers only inter- 
rupted him by a joyous huzza whenever the shot struck the 
bank close above them. 

I have alluded to some hints of Ellis, Canning, and others, 
in disparagement of octosyllabics. Having essayed, probably 
to please these friends, the most difficult of all English meas- 
ures in Don Roderick, Scott this year tried also the heroic couplet, 
and produced The Poacher — on seeing which, Crabbe, as his 
biographer tells us, exclaimed, " This man, whoever he is, can 
do all that I can, and something more." This piece, an imita- 
tion of Moore, and another of Scott, were published in the 
Register, with a preface, entitled The Inferno of Altesidora, in 
which he shadows out the chief reviewers of the day, es- 
pecially Jeffrey and Gifford, with admirable breadth and yet 
lightness of pleasantry ; but he kept his secret as to this 
Inferno and all its appendages, even from Miss Baillie — to 
whom he says, on their appearance, that — " The imitation of 
Crabbe had struck him as good ; that of Moore as bad ; and 
that of himself as beginning well, but falling off grievously to 
the close." It is curious to trace the beginnings of the system- 
atic mystification which he afterwards put in practice. The 
quarto edition of Don Roderick having rapidly gone off, instead 
of reprinting the poem as usual in a separate octavo, he inserted 



208 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

it entire in the Register ; a proof how much that undertaking 
was felt to require extraordinary efforts. 

Throughout 1811, his serious labour continued to be bestowed 
on the Swift ; but this and all other literary tasks were fre- 
quently interrupted in consequence of a step which he took 
early in the year. He had now at last the near prospect of 
emolument from his Edinburgh post. For, connected with the 
other reforms in the Scotch judicature, was a plan for allowing 
the retirement of functionaries, who had served to an advanced 
period of life, upon pensions — while the effective Clerks of 
Session were to be paid not by fees, but by fixed salaries of 
L.1300 ; and contemplating a speedy accession of income so 
considerable as this, he resolved to place himself in the situ- 
ation to which he had probably from his earliest days looked 
forward as the highest object of ambition, that of a Tweedside 
Laird. — Sit mihi sedes utinam senectce I 

And the place on which he had fixed his views, though not 
to the common eye very attractive, had long been one of pecul- 
iar interest for him. I have often heard him tell, that when 
travelling in boyhood with his father from Selkirk to Melrose, 
the old man desired the carriage to halt at the foot of an emi- 
nence, and said, " We must get out here, Walter, and see a thing 
quite in your line." His father then conducted him to a rude 
stone on the edge of an acclivity about half a mile above the 
Tweed, which marks the spot — 

Where gallant Cessford's life-blood dear 
Reeked on dark Elliot's border spear. 

This was the conclusion of the battle of Melrose, fought in 
1526, between the Earls of Angus and Home and the two chiefs 
of the race of Kerr on the one side, and Buccleuch on the other, 
in sight of the young King James V., the possession of whose 
person was the object of the contest. This battle is often men- 
tioned in the Border Minstrelsy, and the reader will find a long 
note on it, under the lines which I have just quoted from the 
Lay of the Last Minstrel. In the names of Skirmish-field, 
Charge-Law, and so forth, various incidents of the fight have 
found a lasting record; the spot where the retainer of Buc- 
cleuch terminated the pursuit by the mortal wound of Kerr of 
Cessford (ancestor of the Dukes of Boxburghe), has always 
been called Turn-again. In his own future domain the young 
minstrel had before him the scene of the last great Clan-battle 
of the Borders. 



PURCHASE OF ABBOTSFORB. 209 

On the 12th of May 1811, he writes thus to James Ballantyne, 

— " My lease of Ashestiel is out. I have, therefore, resolved 
to purchase a piece of ground sufficient for a cottage and a few 
fields. There are two pieces, either of which would suit me, 
but both would make a very desirable property indeed. They 
stretch along the Tweed, on the opposite side from Lord Somer- 
ville, and could be had for between L.7000 and L.8000 — or 
either separate for about half the sum. I have serious 
thoughts of one or both, and must have recourse to my pen 
to make the matter easy. The worst is the difficulty which 
John might find in advancing so large a sum as the copy- 
right of a new poem ; supposing it to be made payable 
within a year at farthest from the work going to press, — 
which would be essential to my purpose. Yet the Lady of the 
Lake came soon home. I have a letter this morning giving me 
good hope of my Treasury business being carried through : if 
this takes place, I will buy both the little farms, which will 
give me a mile of the beautiful turn of Tweed above Gala-foot 

— if not, I will confine myself to one. It is proper John and 
you should be as soon as possible apprised of these my inten- 
tions, which I believe you will think reasonable in my situation, 
and at my age, while I may yet hope to sit under the shade of 
a tree of my own planting. I hope this Register will give a 
start to its predecessors ; I assure you I shall spare no pains. 
John must lend his earnest attention to clear his hands of the 
quire stock, and to taking in as little as he can unless in the 
way of exchange ; in short, reefing our sails, which are at 
present too much spread for our ballast." 

It would no doubt have been wise not to buy land at all until 
he had seen the Treasury arrangement as to his clerkship com- 
pleted — until he had completed also the poem on which he 
relied mainly for the purchase-money; above all, until "John 
reefed his sails;" but he contented himself with one of the 
farms, that comprising the scene of Cessford's slaughter ; the 
cost being L.4000 — one-half of which was borrowed of his 
brother, Major John Scott, the other, raised by the Ballantynes, 
on the security of the long-meditated Rokeby. The seller, the 
Rev. Dr. Douglas, holding the living of Galashiels, in the same 
neighbourhood, had never resided on the property, and his 
efforts to embellish it had been limited to one stripe of firs, so 
long and so narrow that Scott likened it to a black hair-comb. 
It ran from the precincts of the homestead to near Tuni-ar/ai)), 
and has bequeathed the name of the Doctor's redding-Tcame, to 
the mass of nobler trees amidst which its dark straight line can 



210 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

now hardly be traced. The farm consisted of a meadow or 
haugh along the banks of the river, and a tract of undulated 
ground behind, all in a neglected state, undrained, wretchedly 
enclosed, much of it covered with the native heath. The house 
was small and poor, with a common kail-yard on one flank, and 
a staring barn on the other ; while in front appeared a filthy 
pond covered with ducks and duckweed, from which the whole 
tenement had derived the unharmonious designation of Clarty 
Hole. But the Tweed was everything to him — a beautiful 
river, flowing broad and bright over a bed of milk-white peb- 
bles, unless here and there where it darkened into a deep pool, 
overhung as yet only by the birches and alders which had sur- 
vived the statelier growth of the primitive Forest ; and the first 
hour that he took possession he claimed for his farm the name of 
the adjoining /ord, situated just above the influx of the classical 
tributary Gala. As might be guessed from the name of Abbots- 
ford, these lands had all belonged of old to the great Abbey of 
Melrose ; and indeed the Duke of Buccleuch, as the territorial 
representative of that religious brotherhood, still retains some 
seignorial rights over them and almost all the surrounding dis- 
trict. Another feature of no small interest in Scott's eyes was 
an ancient Roman road leading from the Eildon hills to this 
ford, the remains of which, however, are now mostly sheltered 
from view amidst his numerous plantations. The most grace- 
ful and picturesque of all the monastic ruins in Scotland, the 
Abbey of Melrose itself, is visible from many points in the im- 
mediate neighbourhood of the house ; and last, not least, on the 
rising ground full in view across the river, the traveller may 
still observe the chief traces of that celebrated British barrier, 
the Catrail. Such was the territory on which his prophetic 
eye already beheld rich pastures, embosomed among flourishing 
groves, where his children's children should thank the founder. 
To his brother-in-law Mr. Carpenter he writes, " I have bought 
a property extending along the banks of the river Tweed for 
about half-a-mile. This is the greatest incident which has 
lately taken place in our domestic concerns, and I assure you 
we are not a little proud of being greeted as laird and lady of 
Abbotsford. We will give a grand gala when we take posses- 
sion of it, and as we are very clannish in this corner, all the 
Scotts in the country, from the Duke to the peasant, shall dance 
on the green to the bagpipes, and drink whisky punch." 

About the same time he tells Miss Baillie : — " My dreams 
about my cottage go on. My present intention is to have only 
two spare bed-rooms, with dressing-rooms, each of which will 



PURCHASE OF ABBOTSFOBD. 211 

on a pinch have a couch bed ; but I cannot relinquish my Bor- 
der principle of accommodating all the cousins and daniwastles, 
who will rather sleep on chairs, and on the floor, and in the hay- 
loft, than be absent when folks are gathered together ; and truly 
I used to think Ashestiel was very much like the tent of Perie- 
banou, in the Arabian Nights, that suited alike all numbers of 
company equally ; ten people fill it at any time, and I remem- 
ber its lodging thirty-two without any complaint. As for the 
go-about folks, they generally pay their score one way or other ; 
and to confess the truth, I do a little envy my old friend Abon- 
hassan his walks on the bridge of Bagdad, and evening conver- 
sations and suppers with the guests whom he was never to see 
again in his life ; he never fell into a scrape till he met with 
the Caliph — and, thank God, no Caliphs frequent the brigg of 
Melrose, which will be my nearest Rialto at Abbotsford." 

In answering this letter, Miss Baillie says, very prettily : — 
"Yourself and Mrs. Scott, and the children, will feel sorry 
at leaving Ashestiel, which will long have a consequence, and 
be the object of kind feelings with many, from having once 
been the place of your residence. If I should ever be happy 
enough to be at Abbotsford, you must take me to see Ashestiel 
too. I have a kind of tenderness for it, as one has for a man's 
first wife, when you hear he has married a second." The same 
natural sentiment is expressed in a manner characteristically 
different, in a letter from the Ettrick Shepherd : — " Are you 
not sorry at leaving auld Ashestiel for gude an? a, after being at 
so much trouble and expense in making it a complete thing ? 
Upon my word 1 was, on seeing it in the papers." 

In January 1812, Scott entered upon the enjoyment of his 
proper salary as a Clerk of Session, which, with his sheriffdom, 
gave him from this time till very near the close of his life, a 
professional income of L.1600 a year. 

The next of his letters to Joanna Baillie is curious, as giving 
his first impressions on reading Childe Harold. u It is, I think, 
a very clever poem, but gives no good symptom of the writer's 
heart or morals. Although there is a caution against it in the 
preface, you cannot for your soul avoid concluding that the 
author, as he gives an account of his own travels, is also doing 
so in his own character. Now really this is too bad : vice ought 
to be a little more modest, and it must require impudence at 
least equal to the noble Lord's other powers, to claim sympathy 
gravely for the ennui arising from his being tired of his was- 
sailers and his paramours. Yet with all this conceit and assur- 
ance, there is much poetical merit in the book, and I wish you 



212 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

would read it." A month later, lie writes in a similar strain to 
Morritt (May 12), but concludes thus : — " This is upon the 
whole a piece of most extraordinary power, and may rank its 
author with our first poets." 

Lord Byron was, I need not say, the prime object of interest 
this season in the fashionable world of London ; nor did the 
Prince Eegent owe the subsequent hostilities of the noble Poet 
to any neglect on his part. Mr. Murray, the publisher of the 
Romaunt, on hearing, on the 29th of June, Lord Byron's ac- 
count of his introduction to his Royal Highness, conceived that, 
by communicating it to Scott, he might afford the opportunity 
of such a personal explanation between his two poetical friends, 
as should obliterate whatever painful feelings had survived the 
allusions to Marmion in the English Bards and Scotch Review- 
ers ; and this good-natured step had the desired consequences. 
Whether or not Scott supposed that Byron had been privy to 
Murray's movement, I cannot say ; but the senior and the of- 
fended party considered that it became him to take the initia- 
tive. In his first letter to Byron, after some warm praise of 
Childe Harold, he passes to the old Marmion story and says : — 
" The poem, my Lord, was not written upon contract for a sum 
of money — though it is too true that it was sold and published 
in a very unfinished state (which I have since regretted), to 
enable me to extricate myself from some engagements which 
fell suddenly upon me, by the unexpected misfortunes of a very 
near relation. So that, to quote statute and precedent, I really 
come under the case cited by Juvenal, though not quite in the 
extremity of the classic author — 

Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven. 

As for my attachment to literature, I sacrificed for the pleasure 
of pursuing it very fair chances of opulence and professional 
honours, at a time of life when I fully knew their value ; and I 
am not ashamed to say that in deriving advantages in compen- 
sation from the partial favour of the public, I have added some 
comforts and elegancies to a bare independence. I am sure 
your Lordship's good sense will easily put this unimportant 
egotism to the right account, for — though I do not know the 
motive would make me enter into controversy with a fair or 
an unfair literary critic — I may be well excused for a wish to 
clear my personal character from any tinge of mercenary or 
sordid feeling in the eyes of a contemporary of genius. Your 
Lordship will likewise permit me to add, that you would have 



BYRON. 213 

escaped the trouble of this explanation, had I not understood 
that the satire alluded to had been suppressed, not to be re- 
printed. For in removing a prejudice on your Lordship's own 
mind, I had no intention of making any appeal by or through 
you to the public, since my own habits of life have rendered 
my defence as to avarice or rapacity rather too easy." Lord 
Byron in answer says: — "I feel sorry that you should have 
thought it worth while to notice the evil works of my nonage, 
as the thing is suppressed voluntarily, and your explanation 
is too kind not to give me pain. The Satire was written when 
I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on display- 
ing my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts 
of my wholesale assertions. I cannot sufficiently thank you for 
your praise ; and now, waiving myself, let me talk to you of 
the Prince Eegent. He ordered me to be presented to him at 
a ball: and after some sayings, peculiarly pleasing from royal 
lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your 
immortalities ; he preferred you to every bard past and pres- 
ent, and asked which of your works pleased me most. It was 
a difficult question. I answered, I thought the Lay. He said 
his own opinion was nearly similar. In speaking .of the others, 
I told him that I thought you more particularly the poet of 
Princes, as they never appeared more fascinating than in Mar- 
mion and the Lady of the Lake. He was pleased to coincide, 
and to dwell on the description of your Jameses as no less 
royal than poetical. He spoke alternately of Homer and your- 
self, and seemed well acquainted with both. I defy Murray 
to have exaggerated his Royal Highness's opinion of your 
powers ; but it may give you pleasure to hear that it was con- 
veyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting 
to transcribe it ; and with a tone and taste which gave me a 
very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I 
had hitherto considered as confined to mariners, certainly supe- 
rior to those of any living gentleman." — Scott immediately 
(July 16) rejoined in terms of frank kindness, inviting Byron 
to visit him at Abbotsford, where he had now established him- 
self. — " Although," he says, " I am living in a gardener's hut, 
and although the adjacent ruins of Melrose have little to 
tempt one who has seen those of Athens, yet, should you 
take a tour which is so fashionable at this season, I should be 
very happy to have an opportunity of introducing you to any- 
thing remarkable in my fatherland. The fair, or shall I say 
the sage, Apreece that was, Lady Davy that is, is soon to shew 
us how much science she leads captive in Sir Humphrey ; so 



214 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

your Lordship sees, as the citizen's wife says in the farce, 
' Threadneedle Street has some charms/ since they procure us 
such celebrated visitants. As for me, I would rather cross- 
question your Lordship about the outside of Parnassus, than 
learn the nature of the contents of all the other mountains in 
the world. Pray, when under 'its cloudy canopy' did you 
hear anything of the celebrated Pegasus ? Some say he has 
been brought off with other curiosities to Britain, and now 
covers at Tattersal's. I would fain have a cross from him 
out of my little moss-trooper's Galloway, and I think your 
Lordship can tell me how to set about it, as I recognise his 
true paces in the high-mettled description of Ali Pacha's mili- 
tary court." 

The correspondence thus begun erelong assumed a tone of 
unaffected friendliness equally honourable to both these great 
competitors, without rivalry, for the favour of the literary 
world. 

The date of the letter last quoted immediately preceded that 
of Scott's second meeting with another of the most illustrious 
of his contemporaries. He had met Davy at Mr. Words- 
worth's when in the first flush of his celebrity in 1804, and 
been, as one of his letters states, much delighted with "the 
simple and unaffected style of his bearing — the most agree- 
able characteristic of high genius." Sir Humphrey, now at 
the summit of his fame, had come, by his marriage with Scott's 
accomplished relation, into possession of an ample fortune; 
and he and his bride were among the first of the poet's visit- 
ants in the original cabin at Abbotsford. 

It was also this year that the first correspondence took place 
between Scott and Crabbe. The contrast of their epistolary 
styles is highly amusing ; for Mr. Crabbe was as yet quite the 
simple country clergyman ; but there is something better than 
amusement to be derived from observing the cordial confidence 
which a very little intercourse was sufficient to establish be- 
tween men so different from each other in most of the habits 
of life. It will always be considered as one of the most pleas- 
ing peculiarities in Scott's history, that he was the friend of 
every great contemporary poet : yet I could hardly name one 
of them who, manly principles and the cultivation of litera- 
ture apart, had many points of resemblance to him ; and surely 
not one who had fewer than Crabbe. 

He had finally left Ashestiel at Whitsuntide ; and the day 
when this occurred was a sad one for many a poor neighbour 
— for they lost, both in him and his wife, very generous pro- 



REMOVAL TO ABBOT SFOBB. 215 

tectors. In such a place, among the few evils which counter- 
balance so many good things in the condition of the peasantry, 
the most afflicting is the want of access to medical advice. As 
far as their means and skill would go, they had both done 
their utmost to supply this want ; and Mrs. Scott, in particular ^ 
had made it her business to visit the sick in their scattered 
cottages, and bestowed on them the contents of her medicine- 
chest as well as of the larder and cellar, with the same 
unwearied kindness that I observed in her afterwards as lady 
of Abbotsford. Their children remembered the parting scene 
as one of unmixed affliction — but it had had its lighter feat- 
ures. Among the English friends whom Scott owed to his 
frequent visits at Rokeby, none had a higher place in his 
regard than Lady Alvanley, the widow of the celebrated Chief- 
Justice of the Common Pleas. To her, on the 25th, he says, 
— " The neighbours have been much delighted with the pro- 
cession of my furniture, in which old swords, bows, targets, and 
lances, made a very conspicuous show. A family of turkeys 
was accommodated within the helmet of some preux chevalier 
of ancient Border fame ; and the very cows, for aught I know, 
were bearing banners and muskets. I assure your lady- 
ship that this caravan, attended by a dozen of ragged rosy 
peasant children, carrying fishing-rods and spears, and leading 
poneys, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it crossed the 
Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the pencil, and really 
reminded me of one of the gypsey groupes of Callot upon their 
march." 

The necessary alterations on the old farm-house immedi- 
ately commenced; and besides raising its roof and projecting 
some of the lower windows, a rustic porch, a supplemental cot- 
tage at one end, and a fountain to the south soon made their 
appearance. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

Publication of Rokeby and the Bridal of Triermain — Commercial difficul- 
ties — Reconciliation with Constable — Death of Weber — Voyage to the 
Shetland, Orkney, and Hebridean Islands — Publication of the Life and 
Works of Swift — and of Waverley. 1812-1814. 

This was one of the busiest summers of his busy life. Till the 
12th of July he was at his post in the Court of Session five days 
every week ; but every Saturday evening f otfhd him at Abbots- 
ford, to observe the progress his labourers had made within 
doors and without in his absence ; and on Monday night he re- 
turned to Edinburgh. Even before the Summer Session com- 
menced, he appears to have made some advance in his Rokeby, 
for he writes to Mr. Morritt, from Abbotsford, on the 4th of 
May — " As for the house and the poem, there are twelve ma- 
sons hammering at the one, and one poor noddle at the other — 
so they are both in progress ; " and his literary tasks through- 
out the long vacation were continued under the same sort of 
disadvantage. That autumn he had, in fact, no room at all for 
himself. The only parlour which had been hammered into 
habitable condition, served at once for dining-room, drawing- 
room, school-room, and study. A window looking to the river 
was kept sacred to his desk ; an old bed-curtain was nailed up 
across the room close behind his chair, and there, whenever 
the spade, the dibble, or the chisel (for he took his full share 
in all the work on hand) was laid aside, he plied his pen, appar- 
ently undisturbed and unannoyed by the surrounding confusion 
of masons and carpenters, to say nothing of the lady's small 
talk, the children's babble among themselves, or their repeti- 
tion of their lessons. The truth no doubt was, that when at 
his desk he did little more, as far as regarded poetry, than write 
down the lines which he had fashioned in his mind while pur- 
suing his vocation as a planter. By and by, he says to Terry : 
— "The acorns are coming up fast, and Tom Purdie is the 
happiest and most consequential person in the world. My pres- 
ent work is building up the well with some debris from the 
Abbey. The worst of all is, that while my trees grow and my 

216 



ROKEBY. 217 

fountain fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero." 
He then adds that he has at least been relieved of one of his 
daily labours, that of hearing his boy Walter's lesson, by " a 
gallant son of the church, who with one leg of wood, and an- 
other of oak, walks to and fro from Melrose every day for that 
purpose." This was Mr. George Thomson, son of the minister 
of Melrose, who, when the house afforded better accommodation, 
was and continued for many years to be domesticated at Abbots- 
ford. Scott had always a particular tenderness towards persons 
afflicted with any bodily misfortune ; and Thomson, whose leg 
had been amputated in consequence of a rough casualty of his 
boyhood, had a special share in his favour from the high spirit 
with which he refused at the time to betray the name of the 
companion that had occasioned his mishap, and continued ever 
afterwards to struggle against its disadvantages. Tall, vigorous, 
athletic, a dauntless horseman, and expert at the singlestick, 
George formed a valuable as well as picturesque addition to 
the tail of the new laird, who often said, "In the Dominie, 
like myself, accident has spoiled a capital life-guardsman." 
His many oddities and eccentricities in no degree interfered 
with the respect due to his amiable feelings, upright principles, 
and sound learning ; nor did Dominie Thamson at all quarrel 
in after times with the universal credence of the neighbourhood 
that he had furnished many features for the inimitable person- 
age whose designation so nearly resembled his own; and if 
he never " wagged his head " in a " pulpit o' his am," he well 
knew it was not for want of earnest and long-continued inter- 
cession on the part of the author of Guy Mannering. 

For many years Scott had accustomed himself to proceed 
in the composition of poetry along with that of prose essays 
of various descriptions; but it is a remarkable fact that he 
chose this period of perpetual noise and bustle, when he had 
not even a summer-house to himself, for the new experiment 
of carrying on two poems at the same time — and this too 
without suspending the heavy labour of his Swift, to say noth- 
ing of lesser matters in which the Ballantynes we're, from day 
to day, calling for the assistance of his judgment and his pen. 
In the same letter in which Erskine acknowledges the receipt 
of the first four pages of Eokeby, he adverts also to the Bridal 
of Triermain as in rapid progress. Certain fragments of verse 
which were mentioned as being inserted in the Register of 1811 
under the guise of Imitations of Walter Scott, had attracted 
considerable notice; the secret of their authorship was well 
kept; and by some means, even in the shrewdest circles of 



218 LIFE OF Sin WALTER SCOTT. 

Edinburgh, the belief had become prevalent that they came 
from Erskine. Scott had no sooner completed his bargain as 
to Rokeby, than he resolved to pause from time to time in its 
composition, and weave those fragments into a lighter romance, 
to be published anonymously, in a small volume, as nearly as 
possible on the same day with the avowed quarto. He expected 
great amusement from the comparisons which the critics would 
no doubt indulge themselves in drawing between himself and 
this humble candidate ; and Erskine good-humouredly entered 
into the scheme, undertaking to do nothing which should ef- 
fectually suppress the notion of his having set himself up as 
a modest rival to his friend. Nay, he suggested a further re- 
finement, which in the sequel had no small share in the suc- 
cess of this little plot upon the sagacity of the reviewers. "To 
prevent," he writes, " any discovery from your prose, what think 
you of putting down your ideas of what the preface ought to 
contain, and allowing me to write it over ? And perhaps a 
quizzing review might be concocted." This hint was welcome; 
and among other parts of the preface to The Bridal of Triermain 
which " threw out the knowing ones," certain Greek quotations 
are now accounted for. Scott, on his part, appears to have 
studiously interwoven into the piece allusions to personal feel- 
ings and experiences more akin to his friend's history and 
character than to his own ; and he did so still more largely, 
when repeating this experiment, in Harold the Dauntless. 

The same post which conveyed Erskine's letter above quoted, 
brought him an equally wise and kind one in answer to a fresh 
application for details about the Valley of the Tees. Scott 
had promised to spend part of this autumn with Morritt ; but 
now, busied with his planting, and continually urged by Bal- 
lantyne to have the Quarto ready by Christmas, he would will- 
ingly have trusted his friend's knowledge in place of his own 
research. Morritt urgently represented, in reply, the expedi- 
ency of a leisurely personal inspectiou ; adding, " I shall always 
feel your friendship as an honour: we all wish our honours to 
be permanent : and yours promises mine at least a fair chance 
of immortality. I hope, however, you will not be obliged to 
write in a hurry. If you want a few hundreds independent 
of these booksellers, your credit is so very good, now that you 
have got rid of your Old Man of the Sea, that it is no great 
merit to trust you, and I happen at this moment to have five 
or six for which I have no sort of demand : — so rather than 
be obliged to spur Pegasus beyond the power of pulling him up 
when he is going too fast, do consult your own judgment, and 



BOKEBY. 219 

set the midwives of the trade at defiance." This appeal was 
not to be resisted. Scott accepted Morritt's friendly offer so 
far as to ask his assistance in having some of his printer's 
bills discounted : and he proceeded the week after to Rokeby, 
travelling on horseback, his eldest boy and girl on their poneys, 
while Mrs. Scott followed in the carriage. Halting at Flodden 
to expound the field to his young folks, he found that Marmion 
had benefited the public house there very largely; and the 
village Boniface, overflowing with gratitude, expressed his 
anxiety to have a Scott's Head for his sign-post. The poet 
demurred to this proposal, and assured mine host that nothing 
could be more appropriate than the portraiture of a foaming 
tankard, which already surmounted his door-way. " Why, the 
painter-man has not made an ill job," said the landlord, "but 
I would fain have something more connected with the book 
that has brought me so much custom." He produced a well- 
thumbed copy, and handing it to the author, begged he Avould 
at least suggest a motto from the tale of Flodden Field. Scott 
opened the book at the death scene of the hero, and his eye 
was immediately caught by the " Inscription" in black 
letter — 

"Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pray 
For the kind soul of Sibyl Grey." 

" Well, my friend," said he, " what more would you have ? 
You need but strike out one letter in the first of these lines, 
and make your painter-man, the next time he comes this way, 
print between the jolly tankard and your own name 

'Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pay.' " 

Scott was delighted to find, on his return, that this sugges- 
tion had been adopted, and for aught I know, the romantic 
legend may still be visible. 

At Rokeby he remained about a week ; and how he spent it 
is well told in Mr. Morritt's Memorandum : — " The morning 
after he arrived he said — ' You have often given me materials 
for romance — now I want a good robber's cave, and an old 
church of the right sort.' We rode out, and he found what he 
wanted in the ancient slate quarries of Brignal and the ruined 
Abbey of Egglestoue. I observed him noting down even the 
peculiar little wild-flowers and herbs on the side of a bold crag 
near his intended cave of Guy Denzil ; and could not help say- 
ing, that as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, 



220 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the hum- 
ble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his 
scrupulousness ; but I understood him when he replied, ' that 
in nature herself no two scenes were exactly alike, and that 
whoever copied truly what was before his eyes, would possess 
the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an 
imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes 
he recorded ; whereas — whoever trusted to imagination, would 
soon find his own mind circumscribed and contracted to a few 
favourite images, and the repetition of these would sooner or 
later produce that very monotony and barrenness which had 
always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the 
patient worshippers of truth. Besides which,' he said, ' local 
names and peculiarities make a fictitious story look so much 
better in the face.' In fact, from his boyish habits, he was 
but half satisfied with the most beautiful scenery when he 
could not connect with it some local legend, and when I was 
forced sometimes to confess with the Knife-grinder, ' Story ! 
God bless you ! I have none to tell, sir ' — he would laugh and 
say, ' then let us make one — nothing so easy as to make a tra- 
dition.' " Mr. Morritt adds, that he had brought with him 
about half the Bridal of Triermain — and promised himself 
particular satisfaction in laying a trap for Jeffrey. 

Crowded as this year was with multifarious cares and tasks 
— the romance of Rokeby was finished before the close of 
1812. Though it had been long in hand, the MS. bears abun- 
dant evidence of its being the prima cura: three cantos at 
least reached the printer through the Melrose post — written 
on paper of various sorts and sizes — full of blots and interlin- 
eations — the closing couplets of a despatch now and then 
encircling the page, and mutilated by the breaking of the seal. 

According to the recollection of Mr. Cadell, though James 
Ballantyne read the poem, as the sheets were advancing, to 
his usual circle of dilettanti, their whispers were far from ex- 
citing in Edinburgh such an intensity of expectation as had 
been witnessed in the case of the Lady of the Lake. He 
adds, however, that it was looked for with undiminished anx- 
iety in the south. I well remember, being in those days a 
young student at Oxford, how the booksellers' shops there 
were beleaguered for the earliest copies, and how he that had 
been so fortunate as to secure one was followed to his cham- 
bers by a tribe of friends, all as eager to hear it read as ever 
horse-jockeys were to see the conclusion of a match at New- 
market ; and indeed not a few of those enthusiastic academics 



ROKEBY. 221 

had bets depending on the issne of the struggle, which they 
considered the elder favourite as making to keep his own 
ground against the fiery rivalry of Chilcle Harold. 

On the day of publication (January 12, 1813), Scott writes 
gaily enough to Morritt, from his seat at the Clerks' table : — 
" The book has gone off here very bobbishly ; for the impres- 
sion of 3000 and upwards is within two or three score of being 
exhausted, and the demand for these continuing faster than 
they can be boarded. I am heartily glad of this, for now I 
have nothing to fear but a bankruptcy in the Gazette of Par- 
nassus ; but the loss of five or six thousand pounds to my good 
friends and school companions would have afflicted me very 
much. I wish we could whistle you here to-day. Ballantyne 
always gives a christening dinner ; at which the Duke of Buc- 
cleuch 1 and a great many of my friends are formally feasted. 
He has always the best singing that can be heard in Edinburgh, 
and we have usually a very pleasant party, at which your 
health as patron and proprietor of Bokeby will be faithfully 
and honourably remembered." 

It will surprise no one to hear that Mr. Morritt assured his 
friend he considered Bokeby as the best of all his poems. The 
admirable, perhaps the unique fidelity of the local descriptions, 
might alone have swayed, for I will not say it perverted, the 
judgment of the lord of that beautiful and thenceforth classical 
domain; and, indeed, I must admit that I never understood 
or appreciated half the charm of this poem until I had become 
familiar with its scenery. But Scott himself had not designed 
to rest his strength on these descriptions. He said to his 
printer while the work was in progress (September), " I hope 
the thing will do, chiefly because the world will not expect from 
me a poem of which the interest turns upon the character;" 
and in another letter (October), "I think you will see the same 
sort of difference taken in all my former poems, — of which 
I would say, if it is fair for me to say anything, that the force 
in the Lay is thrown on style — in Marmion, on description — 
and in the Lady of the Lake, on incident." Possibly some of 
these distinctions may have been matters of afterthought ; but 
as to Bokeby there can be no mistake. Of its principal charac- 
ters no one who compares the poem with his novels will doubt 
that, had he undertaken their portraiture in prose, they would 
have come forth with effect hardly inferior to any of all the 
groupes he ever created. As it is, I question whether even in 

1 Charles Earl of Dalkeith became Duke of Buccleuch in January 
1812, on the death of Duke Henry his father. 



222 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

his prose there is anything more exquisitely wrought out, 
as well as fancied, than the whole contrast of the two rivals 
for the love of the heroine ; and that heroine herself has a very 
particular interest attached to her. Writing to Miss Edgeworth 
live years after this time (1818), he says, " I have not read one 
of my poems since they were printed, excepting last year the 
Lady of the Lake, which I liked better than I expected, but 
not well enough to induce me to go through the rest — so I 
may truly say with Macbeth — 

I am afraid to think of what I've done — 
Look on' t again I dare not. 

This much of Matilda I recollect — (for that is not so easily 
forgotten) — that she was attempted for the existing person of 
a lady who is now no more, so that I am particularly nattered 
with your distinguishing it from the others, which are in gen- 
eral mere shadows." I can have no doubt that the lady he 
here alludes to, was the object of his own unfortunate first 
love; and as little, that in the romantic generosity, both of 
the youthful poet who fails to win her higher favour, and of 
his chivalrous competitor, we have before us something more 
than a mere shadow* 

In spite of these graceful characters, the inimitable scenery 
on which they are presented, and the splendid vivacity and 
thrilling interest of several chapters in the story — such as the 
opening interview of Bertram and Wy cliff — the flight up the 
cliff on the Greta — the first entrance of the cave at Brignall — 
the firing of Rokeby Castle — and the catastrophe in Eggle- 
stone Abbey ; — in spite certainly of exquisitely happy lines 
profusely scattered throughout the whole composition, and of 
some detached images — that of the setting of the tropical sun 
in Canto VI., for example — which were never surpassed by 
any poet ; — in spite of all these merits, the immediate success 
of Bokeby was greatly inferior to that of the Lady of the Lake ; 
nor has it ever since been so much a favourite with the public 
at large as any other of his poetical romances. He ascribes this 
failure, in his Introduction of 1830, partly to the radically un- 
poetical character of the Roundheads ; but surely their charac- 
ter has its poetical side also, had his prejudices allowed him 
to enter upon its study with impartial sympathy. Partly he 
blames the satiety of the public ear, which had had so much 
of his rhythm, not only from himself, but from dozens of mock- 
ing-birds, male and female, all more or less applauded in their 



THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN. 223 

day, and now all equally forgotten. This circumstance, too, 
had probably no slender effect ; the more that, in defiance of all 
the hints of his friends, he now repeated (with more negligence) 
the uniform octosyllabic couplets of the Lady of the Lake, instead 
of recurring to the more varied cadence of the Lay or Marmion. 
It is fair to add that, among the London circles at least, some 
sarcastic flings in Mr. Moore's Twopenny Post Bag may 
have had an unfavourable influence on this occasion. 1 But the 
cause of failure which the poet himself places last, was un- 
questionably the main one. The deeper and darker passion 
of Childe Harold, the audacity of its morbid voluptuousness, 
and the melancholy majesty of the numbers in which it defied 
the world, had taken the general imagination by storm ; and 
Kokeby, with many beauties and some sublimities, was pitched, 
as a whole, on a key which seemed tame in the comparison. 

I have already adverted to the fact that Scott felt it a relief, 
not a fatigue, to compose the Bridal of Triermain pari passu 
with Kokeby. In answer, for example, to one of his printer's 
letters, he says, " I fully share in your anxiety to get forward 
the grand work ; but, I assure you, I. feel the more confidence 
from coquetting with the guerilla." The quarto was followed, 
within two months, by the small volume which had been de- 
signed for a twin-birth ; — the MS. had been transcribed by 
one of the Ballantynes themselves, in order to guard against 
any indiscretion of the press-people ; and the mystification, 
aided and abetted by Erskine, in no small degree heightened 
the interest of its reception. Except Morritt, Scott had no 
English confidant. Whether any of his companions in the 
Parliament House were in the secret, I have never heard ; but 
I can scarcely believe that any of those who had known him 
and Erskine from their youth upwards, could have believed 
the latter capable either of the invention or the execution of 
this airy and fascinating romance in little. Mr. Jeffrey, as it 
happened, made a voyage that year to America, and thus lost 
the opportunity of immediately expressing his opinion either 
of Kokeby or of Triermain. The Quarterly critic seems to 
have been completely deceived. " The diction (he says) un- 
doubtedly reminds us of a rhythm and cadence we have heard 
before ; but the sentiments, descriptions, and characters, have 
qualities that are native and unborrowed." If this writer was 
(as I suppose) Ellis, he no doubt considered it as impossible 
that Scott should have engaged in such a scheme without giv- 
ing him a hint of it ; but to have admitted into the secret any 

1 See the Epistle of Lady Corke — and that of Messrs. Lackington. 



224 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

one who was likely to criticise the piece seriously, would have 
been to sacrifice the very object of the device. Erskine's own 
suggestion, that " perhaps a quizzical review might be got up," 
led, I believe, to nothing more important than a paragraph in 
one of the Edinburgh newspapers. He may be pardoned for 
having been not a little flattered to find it generally considered 
as not impossible that he should have written such a poem ; 
and I have heard James Ballantyne say, that nothing could be 
more amusing than the style of his coquetting on the subject 
while it was yet fresh; but when this first excitement was 
over, his natural feeling of what was due to himself, as well as 
to his friend, dictated many a remonstrance; and, though he 
ultimately acquiesced in permitting another minor romance to 
be put forth in the same manner, he did so reluctantly, and 
was far from acting his part so well. 

Scott says, in the Introduction to the Lord of the Isles — 
" As Mr. Erskine was more than suspected of a taste for poetry, 
and as I took care, in several places, to mix something that 
might resemble (as far as was in my power) my friend's feeling 
and manner, the train easily caught, and two large editions were 
sold." Among the passages to which he here alludes, are no 
doubt those in which the character of the minstrel Arthur is 
shaded with the colourings of an almost effeminate gentleness. 
Yet, in the midst of them, the " mighty minstrel " himself, 
from time to time, escapes ; as, for instance, where the lover 
bids Lucy, in that exquisite picture of crossing a mountain 
stream, trust to his " stalwart arm " — 

" Which could yon oak's prone trunk uprear." 

Nor can I pass the compliment to Scott's own fair patroness, 
where Lucy's admirer is made to confess, with some momen- 
tary lapse of gallantry, that he 

"Ne'er won — best meed to minstrel true — 
One favouring smile from fair Buccleuch." 

But, above all, the choice of the scenery reveals the treasured 
predilections of the poet. For who that remembers the cir- 
cumstances of his first visit to the vale of St. John, but must 
recognise the impress of his own real romance ? 

As a whole, the Bridal of Triermain appears to me as charac- 
teristic of Scott as any of his larger poems. His genius per- 
vades and animates it beneath a thin and playful veil, which 



THE BBIDAL OF TRIERMAIN. 225 

perhaps adds as much of grace as it takes away of splendour. 
As Wordsworth says of the eclipse on the lake of Lugano — 

" 'Tis sunlight sheathed and gently charmed ; " 

and I think there is at once a lightness and a polish of versifi- 
cation beyond what he has elsewhere attained. If it be a min- 
iature, it is such a one as a Cooper might have hung fearlessly 
beside the masterpieces of Vandyke. 

The Introductions contain some of the most exquisite passages 
he ever produced ; but their general effect has always struck 
me as unfortunate. No art can reconcile us to contemptuous 
satire of the merest frivolities of modern life — some of them 
already grown obsolete — interlaid between such bright visions 
of the old world of romance. The fall is grievous from the 
hoary minstrel of Newark and his feverish tears on Killie- 
crankie, to a pathetic swain who can stoop to denounce as 
objects of his jealousy 

' ' The landaulet and four blood bays — 
The Hessian boot and pantaloon." 

Before Triermain came out, Scott had taken wing for Abbots- 
ford ; and indeed he seems to have so contrived it in his earlier 
period, that he should not be in Edinburgh when any unavowed 
work was published ; whereas, from the first, in the case of 
books that bore his name on the title-page, he walked as usual 
to the Parliament House, and bore all the buzz and tattle of 
friends and acquaintance with an air of good-humoured equa- 
nimity, or rather of total indifference. 

The limits of this narrative do not admit of minute details 
concerning the commercial adventures in which Scott was en- 
tangled ; and those of the period we have now reached are so 
painful that I am very willing to spare them. By the spring 
of 1813 the crisis in the war affected credit universally ; and 
while the oldest firms in every department of the trade of liter- 
ature had difficulties to contend with, the pressure brought 
many of humbler resources to extremity. It was so with the 
house of John Ballantyne & Co. ; which had started with no 
solid capital except what Scott supplied; and had been en- 
trusted to one who never looked beyond the passing day — 
availed himself with a blind recklessness of the system of dis- 
counting and renewing bills — and, though attached to Scott 
by the strongest ties of grateful veneration, yet allowed himself 
to neglect month after month the most important of his duties 
Q 



226 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

— that of keeping the only moneyed partner accurately in- 
formed as to the actual obligations and resources of the estab- 
lishment. 

Mr. John's loose methods of transacting business had soon 
cooled the alliance between his firm and the great Tory pub- 
lisher of London. Murray's Scotch Agency was taken away — 
he retained hardly any connection with Scott himself, except 
as a contributor to his Review, and from time to time a friendly 
visitor in Albemarle Street ; and under these altered circum- 
stances, I do not see how the whole concern of John Ballantyne 
& Co. could have escaped the necessity of an abrupt and disas- 
trous exposure within but a few weeks after the appearance of 
the Triermain, had not the personal differences with Constable 
been by that time healed. Mr. Hunter had now retired from 
that house ; and Constable, released from his influence, had 
been watching with hope the unconcealable complication in the 
affairs of this fragile rival. Constable had neA^er faltered in 
his conviction that Scott must continue to be the ruling spirit 
in the literature of their age : and there were few sacrifices 
which that sanguine man would not have made to regain his 
hold on the unmatched author. The Ballantynes saw the 
opening for help, and their advances were well met ; but some 
quite unexpected calls on Scott compelled him to interfere di- 
rectly, and he began in his own person a negotiation which, 
though at the time he likened it to that of the treaty of Amiens, 
was far from being capriciously protracted, or from leading 
only to a brief and barren truce. Constable, flattered in limine 
by the offer, on fair terms, of a fourth part of the remaining 
copyright of Rokeby, agreed to relieve the labouring firm of a 
mass of its stock : the partners to exert themselves in getting 
rid of the residue, and then wind up their publishing concern 
with all convenient speed. This was a great relief: on the 
18th of May 1813, Scott writes to Mr. John — " For the first 
time these many weeks, I shall lay my head on a quiet pil- 
low : " but there was still much to be achieved. The ware- 
house must still groan under unsaleable quires — the desk, too 
late explored, shewed a dismal vista of approaching demand. 
Scott was too just not to take something of the blame upon 
himself ; the accumulated stock bore witness against too many 
of his own plans and suggestions : nor could he acquit himself 
of carelessness in not having forced the manager to greater ex- 
actness in the detailing of accounts. But still he felt that he 
had serious reason for complaint; and the letter of which a 
sentence has just been quoted ends in these words, which ought 



COMMERCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 227 

to have produced the deeper impression because of their gentle- 
ness : — " Adieu, my dear John. If I have ever expressed 
myself with irritation in speaking of this business, you must 
impute it to the sudden, extensive, and unexpected embarrass- 
ments in which I found myself involved all at once. If to your 
real goodness of heart and integrity, and to the quickness and 
acuteness of your talents, you added habits of more universal 
circumspection, and, above all, the courage to tell disagreeable 
truths to those whom you hold in regard, I pronounce that the 
world never held such a man of business. These it must be 
your study to add to your other good qualities. Meantime, as 
some one says to Swift, I love you with all your failings. 
Pray make an effort and love me with all mine. Yours truly, 
W. S." 

"P.S. — James has behaved very well during this whole 
transaction, and has been most steadily attentive to business. 
I am convinced that the more he works the better his health 
will be. One or other of you will need to be constantly in the 
printing-office henceforward — it is the sheet-anchor." 

The allusion in this postscript to the printer's health reminds 
me that Scott's letters to himself are full of hints on that sub- 
ject, even from a very early period of their connexion; and 
these hints are all to the same effect. One letter (Ashestiel, 
1810) will be a sufficient specimen : — "I am very sorry for the 
state of your health, and should be still more so, were I not 
certain that I can prescribe for you as well as any physician in 
Edinburgh. You have naturally an athletic constitution and 
a hearty stomach, and these agree very ill with a sedentary 
life and the habits of indolence which it brings on. You must 
positively put yourself on a regimen as to eating, not for a 
month or two, but for a year at least, and take regular exercise 
— and my life for yours." — Among the early pets at Abbots- 
ford there was a huge raven, whose powers of speech were 
remarkable, and who died in consequence of an equally remark- 
able voracity. Thenceforth, Scott often repeated to his old 
friend, and occasionally scribbled by way of postscript to his 
notes on business — 

" When you are craving, 
Remember the Raven." 

Sometimes the formula is varied to — 

" When you've dined half, 
Think on poor Ralph I" 



228 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

His preachments of regularity in book-keeping to John, and 
of abstinence from good cheer to James, were equally vain ; but, 
on the other hand, it must be allowed that the "hard skirmishes," 
as he calls them, of May 1813, do not seem to have left on him- 
self all the impression that might have been anticipated. He 
was in the most vigorous of his prime : his temperament was 
buoyant and hopeful : nothing had occurred to check his con- 
fidence in the resources of his own genius and industry. So it 
was, that ere many weeks had passed, he was preparing fresh 
embarrassments for himself by bidding for another parcel of 
land. As early as the 20th of June he writes to Constable as 
being already aware of this matter, and alleges his anxiety " to 
close at once with a very capricious person," as the only reason 
that could have induced him to offer for L.5000 the whole 
copyright of an as yet unwritten poem, to be called " The Name- 
less Glen." A long correspondence ensued, in the course of 
which Scott mentions " the Lord of the Isles," as a title which 
had suggested itself to him in place of " The Nameless Glen ; " 
but as the negotiation did not succeed, I may pass its details. 
The new property which he was so eager to acquire, was that 
hilly tract stretching from the old Eoman road near Turn-again 
towards the Cauldshiels Loch: a then desolate and naked 
mountain-mere, which he likens, in a letter of this summer, to 
the Lake of the Genie and the Fisherman in the Arabian Tale. 
To obtain this lake at one extremity of his estate, as a contrast 
to the Tweed at the other, was a prospect for which hardly any 
sacrifice woidd have appeared too much ; and he contrived to 
gratify his wishes in the course of July. Nor was he, I must 
add, more able to control some of his minor tastes. I find him 
writing to Terry on the same 20th of June, about " that splen- 
did lot of ancient armour, advertised by Winstanley," a cele- 
brated auctioneer in London, of which he had the strongest 
fancy to make spoil, though he was at a loss to know where it 
should be placed when it reached Abbotsf ord ; and on the 2d 
of July, this acquisition also having been settled, he says to 
the same correspondent — "I have written to Mr. Winstanley. 
My bargain with Constable was otherwise arranged, but little 
John is to find the needful article, and I shall take care of Mr. 
Winstanley' s interest, who has behaved too handsomely in this 
matter to be trusted to the mercy of our little friend the Pica- 
roon, who is, notwithstanding his many excellent qualities, a 
little on the score of old Gobbo — doth somewhat smack — 
somewhat grow to." 

On the 12th of July, as usual, he removed to Tweedside ; 



COMMERCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 229 

but lie had not long enjoyed himself in sketching out woods 
and walks for the borders of his Fairy Lake before he received 
sharp admonishment. Two lines of a letter to the " little Pica- 
roon," dated July 24th, speak already to a series of annoyances : 
— " Dear John, — I sent you the order, and have only to hope 
it arrived safe and in good time. I waked the boy at three 
o'clock myself, having slept little, less on account of the money 
than of the time. Surely you should have written, three or 
four days before, the probable amount of the deficit, and, as on 
former occasions, I would have furnished you with means of 
meeting it. These expresses, besides every other inconven- 
ience, excite surprise in my family and in the neighbourhood. 
I know no justifiable occasion for them but the unexpected 
return of a bill. I do not consider you as answerable for the 
success of plans, but I do and must hold you responsible for 
giving me, in distinct and plain terms, your opinion as to any 
difficulties which may occur, and that in such time that I may 
make arrangements to obviate them if possible." 

The affair of the 24th itself was aggravated by the circum- 
stance that Scott had been prepared to start on the 25th for 
a visit in a different county : so that the worst consequences 
that had so late alarmed his manager, must have been after all 
unavoidable if he had deferred his messenger but a few hours 
more. 

Scott proceeded, accordingly, to join a gay and festive circle, 
whom the Duke of Buccleuch had assembled about him on first 
taking possession of the magnificent Castle of Drumlanrig, in 
Nithsdale, the principal messuage of the dukedom of Queens- 
berry, which had recently lapsed into his family. But post 
equitem sedet atra cura — a second and a third of these unwel- 
come missives, rendered necessary by neglect of precisely the 
same kind, reached him in the midst of this scene of rejoicing. 

He had been engaged also to meet the Marquis of Abercorn 
at Carlisle, in the first week of August, on business connected 
with his brother Thomas's late administration of that noble- 
man's affairs ; and he had designed to pass from Drumlanrig 
to Carlisle for his purpose, without going back to Abbotsford. 
In consequence of these repeated harassments, however, he so 
far altered his plans as to cut short his stay at Drumlanrig, and 
turn homewards for two or three days, where James Ballantyne 
met him with such a statement as in some measure relieved his 
mind. 

He then proceeded to fulfil his engagement with Lord 
Abercorn, whom he encountered travelling in a rather peculiar 



230 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

style between Carlisle and Longtown. The ladies of the family 
and the household occupied four or five carriages, all drawn by 
the Marquis's own horses, while the noble Lord himself brought 
up the rear, mounted on horseback, and decorated with the rib- 
bon of the G-arter. On meeting the cavalcade, Scott turned with 
them, and he was not a little amused when they reached the vil- 
lage of Longtown, which he had ridden through an hour before, 
with the preparations which he found there made for the dinner 
of the party. The Marquis's major-domo and cook had arrived 
there early in the morning, and everything was now arranged for 
his reception in the little public house, as nearly as possible in 
the style of his own mansions. The ducks and geese that had been 
dabbling three or four hours ago in the village pond, were now 
ready to make their appearance under numberless disguises ; a 
regular bill-of-f are flanked the Marquis's allotted cover ; every 
huckaback towel in the place had been pressed to do service as 
a napkin ; and the landlady's poor remnants of crockery had 
been furbished up, and mustered in solemn order on a crazy 
beaufet, which was to represent a sideboard worthy of Lu- 
cullus. I think it worth while to preserve this anecdote, which 
Scott delighted in telling, as perhaps the last relic of a style of 
manners now passed away, and never likely to be revived among 
us. 

Having despatched this dinner and his business, Scott again 
turned southwards, intending to spend a few days at Eokeby ; 
but on reaching Penrith, the landlord placed a letter in his 
hands : ecce iterum — it was once more a cry of distress from 
John Ballantyne. Having once more despatched a cheque, 
and a gentle remonstrance to Edinburgh, he rode on to Brough ; 
but there he received such a painful account of Mrs. Morritt's 
health, that he abandoned his intention of proceeding to 
Eokeby ; and indeed it was much better that he should be at 
Abbotsford again; for by this time the whole of these affairs 
had reached a second crisis. Again Constable was consulted ; 
and now a detailed statement was submitted to him. On ex- 
amining it, he so expressed himself, that all the partners con- 
curred in the necessity of submitting forthwith to steps not 
less decisive than painful. Constable again relieved them of 
some of their crushing stock ; but he frankly owned that he 
could not do in that way enough to serve them effectually; 
and Scott was constrained to have recourse to the Duke of 
Buccleuch, who with the kindest promptitude gave him a 
guarantee to the extent of L.4000, immediately available in 
the money market — the poet insuring his life for that sum, 



COMMERCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 231 

and depositing the insurance as security with, the Duke ; while 
John Ballantyne agreed, in place of a leisurely winding up of 
the publishing affair, to terminate it with the utmost possible 
speed, and endeavour to establish himself as an auctioneer of 
books, antiquities, and objects of vertu. How bitterly must 
Scott have felt his situation when he wrote thus to John on 
the 16th August : — " With regard to the printing, it is my 
intention to retire from that also so soon as I can possibly do 
so with safety to myself, and with the regard I shall always 
entertain for James's interest. Whatever loss I may sustain 
will be preferable to the life I have lately led, when I seem 
surrounded by a sort of magic circle, which neither permits 
me to remain at home in peace, nor to stir abroad with pleas- 
ure. Your first exertion as an auctioneer may probably be on 
' that distinguished, select, and inimitable collection of books, 
made by an amateur of this city retiring from business/ I do 
not feel either health or confidence in my own powers sufficient 
to authorize me to take a long price for a new poem, until these 
affairs shall have been in some measure digested." There still 
remained a difficult digestion. His correspondence on to Christ- 
mas is deeply chequered ; but the nature of the details may be 
guessed by such as have had experience in the merchandise of 
literature ; and few others, I suppose, will regret their curtail- 
ment. 

It was in the midst of these distressing occurrences that Scott 
received two letters — one from Dr. Stanier Clarke, private 
librarian to the Kegent, and another, more formal, from the 
Marquis of Hertford, Lord Chamberlain, announcing his 
Koyal Highness's desire to nominate him to the office of Poet- 
laureate, which had just fallen vacant by the death of Mr. Pye. 
Its emoluments were understood by him to be " L.400, or at 
least L.300 a-year ; " at that time such an accession of income 
must have been welcome ; and at any rate, what the Sovereign 
designed as a favour and a distinction could not be lightly 
waived by Walter Scott. He felt, however, that holding 
already two lucrative offices in the gift of the Crown, he could 
not gracefully accept a third, entirely unconnected with his 
own legal profession, while so many eminent men remained 
wholly dependent on their literary exertions ; and the friends 
whom he consulted, especially the Duke of Bucclench, all con- 
curring in the propriety of these scruples, he declined the royal 
offer. It is evident that from the first he had had Mr. Southey's 
case in his contemplation. The moment lie made up his mind 
as to himself, he wrote to Mr. Croker and others in the Prince 



232 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Regent's confidence, suggesting that name : and he had soon to 
congratulate his friend of Keswick on assuming the official 
laurel, which " had been worn of old by Dry den and more lately 
by Warton." Mr. Southey, in an essay long subsequent to 
his death, says — " Sir Walter's conduct was, as it always 
was, characteristically friendly and generous." 

This happened in September. October brought another suc- 
cession of John Ballantyne's missives, to one of which Scott 
answers : — " For Heaven's sake, treat me as a man, not as a 
milch-cow ; " — and a third crisis, at the approach of the Mar- 
tinmas term, was again weathered with the narrowest difficulty 
— chiefly, as before, through the intervention of Constable. 
All these annoyances produced no change whatever in his 
habits of industry. During these anxious months of Sep- 
tember, October, and November, he kept feeding the press 
from day to day both with the annotated text of the closing 
volumes of Swift's works, and with the MS. of his Life of the 
Dean. He had also proceeded to mature in his mind the plan 
of the Lord of the Isles, and executed such a portion of the 
First Canto as gave him confidence to renew his negotiation 
with Constable for the sale of the whole, or part of its copy- 
right. It was, moreover, at this period, that his eye chanced 
to light once more on the Ashestiel fragment of Waverley. He 
read over those introductory chapters — thought they had been 
undervalued — and determined to finish the story. 

It is proper to mention, that, in the very agony of these 
perplexities, the unfortunate Maturin received from him a 
timely succour of L.50, rendered doubly acceptable by the 
kind and judicious letter of advice in which it was enclosed ; 
and I have before me ample evidence that his benevolence 
had been extended to other struggling brothers of the trade, 
even when he must often have had actual difficulty to meet the 
immediate expenditure of his own family. 

The great successes of the Allied Powers in the campaigns 
of 1813 gave a salutary stimulus to commercial enterprise : 
and the return of general confidence facilitated many arrange- 
ments in which Scott's interests were involved. He, however, 
needed no such considerations to heighten his patriotic enthu- 
siasm, which overflowed in two songs — one of them never 
since, I believe, omitted at any celebration of the anniversary 
of Mr. Pitt's death — 

" O dread was the time and more dreadful the omen, 
When the brave on Marengo lay slaughter' d in vain." 



WEBER. 233 

He also wrote an address to the Sovereign for the Magistracy 
of Edinburgh, which was privately acknowledged to the pen- 
man, by his Royal Highness's command, as " the most elegant 
congratulation a sovereign ever received or a subject offered." 
The Magistrates accordingly found particular graciousness at 
Carlton House; and on their return (Christmas, 1813) pre- 
sented Scott with the freedom of his native city and a very 
handsome piece of plate. 

I must, however, open the year 1814 with a melancholy 
story. Mention has been made in connection with an unlucky 
edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Henry Weber, a German 
scholar, who, escaping to this country in 1804, from misfor- 
tunes in his own, excited Scott's compassion, and was thence- 
forth furnished, through his means, with literary employment 
of various sorts. Weber was a man of considerable learning ; 
but Scott, as was his custom, appears to have formed an exag- 
gerated notion of his capacity, and certainly countenanced him, 
to his 'own severe cost, in several most unhappy undertakings. 
When not engaged on things of a more ambitious character, 
he had acted for ten years as his protector's amanuensis, and 
when the family were in Edinburgh, he very often dined with 
them. There was something very interesting in his appear- 
ance and manners : he had a fair, open countenance, in which 
the honesty and the enthusiasm of his nation were alike visible ; 
his demeanour was gentle and modest ; and he had not only a 
stock of curious antiquarian knowledge, but the reminiscences, 
which he detailed with amusing simplicity, of an early life 
chequered with many strange-enough adventures. He was, 
in short, much a favourite with Scott and all the household ; 
and was invited to dine with them so frequently, chiefly 
because his friend was aware that he had an unhappy propen- 
sity to drinking, and was anxious to keep him away from 
places where he might have been more likely to indulge it. 
This vice had been growing on him ; and of late Scott had 
found it necessary to make some rather severe remonstrances 
about habits which were at once injuring his health and inter- 
rupting his literary industry. They had, however, parted 
kindly when Scott left Edinburgh at Christmas ; and the day 
after his return, Weber attended him as usual in his library — 
being employed in transcribing extracts during several hours, 
while his friend, seated over against him, continued working at 
the Life of Swift. The light beginning to fail, Scott threw 
himself back in his chair, and was about to ring for candles, 
when he observed the German's eyes fixed upon him with an 



234 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

unusual solemnity of expression. " Weber," said he, " what's 
the matter with you ? " " Mr. Scott," said Weber, rising, " you 
have long insulted me, and I can bear it no longer. - I have 
brought a pair of pistols with me, and must insist on your 
taking one of them instantly ; " and with that he produced the 
weapons, which had been deposited under his chair, and laid 
one of them on Scott's manuscript. " You are mistaken, I 
think," said Scott, " in your way of setting about this affair — 
but no matter. It can, however, be no part of your object to 
annoy Mrs. Scott and the children ; therefore, if you please, 
we will put the pistols into the drawer till after dinner, and 
then arrange to go out together like gentlemen." Weber 
answered with equal coolness, " I believe that will be better," 
and laid the second pistol also on the table. Scott locked 
them both in his desk, and said, " I am glad you have felt the 
propriety of what I suggested — let me only request farther, 
that nothing may occur while we are at dinner to give my 
wife any suspicion of what has been passing." Weber again 
assented, and Scott withdrew to his dressing-room, from which 
he despatched a message to one of Weber's companions, — and 
then dinner was served, and Weber joined the circle as usual. 
He conducted himself with composure, and everything seemed 
to go on in the ordinary way, until whisky and hot water being 
produced, Scott, instead of inviting his guest to help himself, 
mixed two moderate tumblers of toddy, and handed one of 
them to Weber, who, upon that, started up with a furious 
countenance, but instantly sat down again, and when Mrs. 
Scott expressed her fear that he was ill, answered placidly 
that he was liable to spasms, but that the pain was gone. He 
then took the glass, eagerly gulped down its contents, and 
Xmshed it back to Scott. At this moment the friend who had 
been sent for made his appearance ; and Weber, on seeing him 
enter the room, rushed past him and out of the house, without 
stopping to put on his hat. The friend, who pursued instantly, 
came up with him at the end of the street, and did all he could 
to soothe his agitation, but in vain. The same evening he was 
obliged to be put into a strait-waistcoat ; and though in a few 
days he exhibited such symptoms of recovery that he was 
allowed to go by himself to pay a visit in the North of Eng- 
land, he there soon relapsed, and continued ever afterwards a 
hopeless lunatic, being supported to the end of his life, in June 
1818, at Scott's expense, in an asylum at York. 

On the first of July 1814, the Swift, nineteen volumes 8vo, 
at length issued from the press. This adventure, undertaken 



LIFE OF SWIFT. 235 

by Constable in 1808, had been proceeded in during all the 
variety of their personal relations, and now came forth when 
author and publisher felt more warmly towards each other 
than perhaps they had ever before done. The impression was 
of 1250 copies ; and a reprint of similar extent was called for 
in 1824. Scott added to his edition many admirable pieces, 
both in prose and verse, which had never before been printed, 
and still more, which had escaped notice amidst old bundles of 
pamphlets and broadsides. To the illustration of these and of 
all the better known writings of the Dean, he brought the 
same qualifications which had, by general consent, distin- 
guished his Dryden : " uniting," as the Edinburgh Review 
expresses it, " to the minute knowledge and patient research 
of the Malones and Chalmerses, a vigour of judgment and a 
vivacity of style to which they had no pretensions." His bio- 
graphical narrative, introductory essays, and notes show, 
indeed, an intimacy of acquaintance with the obscurest details 
of the political, social, and literary history of the period of 
Queen Anne, which it is impossible to consider without feeling 
a lively regret that he never accomplished a long-cherished 
purpose of editing Pope'. It has been specially unfortunate 
for that " true deacon of the craft," as Scott often called him, 
that first Goldsmith, and then Scott, should have taken up, 
only to abandon it, the project of writing his life and annotat- 
ing his works. 

The Edinburgh Reviewer thus characterises the Memoir of 
the Dean of St. Patrick's : — 

"It is not much like the production of a mere man of letters, or a 
fastidious speculator in sentiment and morality ; but exhibits throughout, 
and in a very pleasing form, the good sense and large toleration of a man 
of the world, with much of that generous allowance for the 

' Fears of the braYe and follies of the wise,' 

which genius too often requires, and should therefore always be most for- 
ward to show. It is impossible, however, to avoid noticing that Mr. Scott 
is by far too favourable to the personal character of his author, whom we 
think it would really be injurious to the cause of morality to allow to 
pass either as a very dignified, or a very amiable person. The truth is, 
we think, that he was extremely ambitious, arrogant, and selfish ; of a 
morose, vindictive, and haughty temper ; and though capable of a sort of 
patronising generosity towards his dependents, and of some attachment 
towards those who had long known and flattered him, his general 
demeanour, both in public and private life, appears to have been far from 
exemplary ; destitute of temper and magnanimity, and we will add, of 
principle, in the former ; and in the latter, of tenderness, fidelity, or com- 
passion." — Vol. xvii. p. 9. 



236 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

I have no desire to break a lance in this place in defence of 
Swift. It does not appear to me that he stands at all distin- 
guished among politicians (least of all, among the politicians 
of his time) for laxity of principle ; nor can I consent to charge 
his private demeanour with the absence either of tenderness, or 
fidelity, or compassion. But who ever dreamed — most assur- 
edly not Scott — of holding up the Dean of St. Patrick's as on 
the whole an " exemplary character " ? The biographer felt, 
whatever his critic may have thought on the subject, that a 
vein of morbid humour ran through Swift's whole existence, 
both mental and physical, from the beginning. "He early 
adopted," says Scott, " the custom of observing his birthday as 
a term not of joy but of sorrow, and of reading, when it recurred, 
the striking passage of Scripture in which Job laments and 
execrates the day upon which it was said in his father's house 
that a mail-child was born;" and I should have expected that 
any man who had considered the black close of the career thus 
early clouded, and read the entry of Swift's diary on the fu- 
neral of Stella, his epitaph on himself, and the testament by 
which he disposed of his fortune, would have been willing, like 
Scott, to dwell on the splendour of his immortal genius, and the 
many traits of manly generosity "which he unquestionably 
exhibited," rather than on the faults and foibles of nameless 
and inscrutable disease, which tormented and embittered the 
far greater part of his earthly being. What the critic says of 
the practical and business-like style of Scott's biography, 
appears very just — and I think the circumstance eminently 
characteristic ; nor, on the whole, could his edition, as an edi- 
tion, have been better dealt with than in the Essay which I 
have quoted. It was, by the way, written by Mr. Jeffrey at 
Constable's particular request. " It was, I think, the first 
time I ever asked such a thing of him," the bookseller said to 
me ; " and I assure you the result was no encouragement to 
repeat such petitions." Mr. Jeffrey attacked Swift's whole 
character at great length, and with consummate dexterity ; and, 
in Constable's opinion, his article threw such a cloud on the 
Dean as materially checked for a time the popularity of his 
writings. Admirable as the paper is in point of ability, I 
think Mr. Constable may have considerably exaggerated its 
effects ; but in those days it must have been difficult for him 
to form an impartial opinion upon such a question; for, as 
Johnson said of Cave that " he could not spit over his window 
without thinking of The Gentleman's Magazine." I believe 
Constable allowed nothing to interrupt his paternal pride in the 



PUBLICATION OF WAVERLEY. 237 

concerns of his Review, until Waverley opened another period- 
ical publication still more important to his fortunes. 

And this consummation was not long delayed. Before 
Christmas Erskine had perused the greater part of the first 
volume, and expressed his decided opinion that Waverley 
would prove the most popular of all his friend's writings. 
The MS. was forthwith copied by John Ballantyne, and sent 
to press. As soon as a volume was printed, Ballantyne con- 
veyed it to Constable, who did not for a moment doubt from 
what pen it proceeded, but took a few days to consider of 
the matter, and then offered L.700 for the copyright. When 
we recollect what the state of novel literature in those days 
was, and that the only exceptions to its mediocrity, the Irish 
Tales of Miss Edgeworth, however appreciated in refined cir- 
cles, had a circulation so limited that she had never realised a 
tithe of L.700 by the best of them — it must be allowed that 
Constable's offer was a liberal one. Scott's answer, however, 
was, that L.700 was too much in case the novel should not be 
successful, and too little if it should. He added, " If our fat 
friend had said L.1000, I should have been staggered." John 
did not forget to convey this last hint to Constable, but the 
latter did not choose to act upon it ; and ultimately agreed to 
an equal division of profits between himself and the author. 

There was a considerable pause between the finishing of the 
first volume and the beginning of the second. Constable, eager 
about an extensive Supj)lement to his Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
earnestly requested Scott to undertake a few articles; and, 
anxious to gratify the generous bookseller, he laid aside his 
tale until he had finished two essays — those on Chivalry and 
the Drama. They were written in the course of April and 
May, and he received for each of them L.100. 

A letter of the 9th July to Mr. Morritt gives in more exact 
detail than the author's own recollection could supply in 1830, 
the history of the completion of Waverley : which had then 
been two days published. " I must now " (he says) " account for 
my own laziness, by referring you to a small anonymous sort 
of a novel, which you will receive by the mail of this day. It 
was a very old attempt of mine to embody some traits of those 
characters and manners peculiar to Scotland, the last remnants 
of which vanished during my own youth. I had written great 
part of the first volume, and sketched other passages, when I 
mislaid the MS., and only found it by the merest accident as I 
was rummaging the drawers of an old cabinet ; and I took the 
fancy of finishing it. It has made a very strong impression 



238 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

here, and the good people of Edinburgh are busied in tracing 
the author, and in finding out originals for the portraits it con- 
tains. Jeffrey has offered to make oath that it is mine, and 
another great critic has tendered his affidavit ex contrario; so 
that these authorities have divided the Guide Town. Let me 
know your opinion about it. The truth is that this sort of 
muddling work amuses me, and I am something in the condi- 
tion of Joseph Surface, who was embarrassed by getting him- 
self too good a reputation ; for many things may please people 
well enough anonymously, which if they have me in the title- 
page, would just give me that sort of ill name which precedes 
hanging — and that would be in many respects inconvenient, 
if I thought of again trying a grande opus." 

Morritt, as yet the only English confidant, conveyed on 
volume by volume as he read them his honest criticism : at 
last vehemently protesting against the maintenance of the 
incognito. Scott in his reply (July 24th) says : — "I shall 
not own Waverley ; my chief reason is, that it would prevent 
me the pleasure of writing again. David Hume, nephew of 
the historian, says the author must be of a Jacobite family 
and predilections, a yeoman-cavalry man, and a Scottish 
lawyer, and desires me to guess in whom these happy attri- 
butes are united. I shall not plead guilty, however; and as 
such seems to be the fashion of the day, I hope charitable 
people will believe my affidavit in contradiction to all other 
evidence. The Edinburgh faith now is, that Waverley is writ- 
ten by Jeffrey, having been composed to lighten the tedium of 
his late transatlantic voyage. So you see the unknown infant 
is like to come to preferment. In truth, I am not sure it would 
be considered quite decorous for me, as a Clerk of Session, to 
write novels. Judges being monks, Clerks are a sort of lay 
brethren, from whom some solemnity of walk and conduct may 
be expected. So whatever I may do of this kind, 'I shall 
whistle it down the wind, and let it prey at fortune.' : The 
second edition is, I believe, nearly through the press. It will 
hardly be printed faster than it was written ; for though the 
first volume was begun long ago, and actually lost for a time, 
yet the other two were begun and finished between the 4th 
June and the first July, during all which I attended my duty in 
Court, and proceeded without loss of time or hinderance of 
business." 

This statement as to the time occupied by the second and 
third volumes of Waverley, recalls to my memory a trifling 

i Othello, Act III. Scene 3. 



PUBLICATION OF WAVEBLEY. 239 

anecdote, which, as connected with a dear friend of my youth, 
whom I have not seen for many years, and may very probably 
never see again in this world, I shall here set down, in the 
hope of affording him a momentary, though not an uu mixed 
pleasure, when he may chance to read this compilation on a 
distant shore — and also in the hope that my humble record 
may impart to some active mind in the rising generation a 
shadow of the influence which the reality certainly exerted 
upon his. Happening to pass through Edinburgh in June 
1814, I dined one day with the gentleman in question (now the 
Honourable William Menzies, one of the Supreme Judges at 
the Cape of Good Hope), whose residence was then in George 
Street, situated very near to, and at right angles with, North 
Castle Street. It was a party of very young persons, most of 
them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the Bar of Scot- 
land, all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first flush of man- 
hood, with little remembrance of the yesterday, or care of the 
morrow. When my companion's worthy father and uncle, 
after seeing two or three bottles go round, left the juveniles to 
themselves, the weather being hot, we adjourned to a library 
which had one large window looking northwards. After ca- 
rousing here for an hour or more, I observed that a shade had 
come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be placed 
immediately opposite to myself, and said something that inti- 
mated a fear of his being unwell. "No," said he, "I shall be 
well enough presently, if you will only let me sit where you 
are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded hand in 
sight of me here, which has often bothered me before, and 
now it won't let me fill my glass with a good will." I rose to 
change places with him accordingly, and he pointed out to me 
this hand which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, dis- 
turbed his hour of hilarity. " Since we sat down," he said, 
"I have been watching it — it fascinates my eye — it never 
stops — page after page is finished and thrown on that heap of 
MS. and still it goes on unwearied — and so it will be till 
candles are brought in, and God knows how long after that. 
It is the same every night — I can't stand a sight of it when I 
am not at my books." — "Some stupid, dogged, engrossing 
clerk, probably," exclaimed myself, or some other giddy youth 
in our society. "'No, boys," said our host, "I well know what 
hand it is — 'tis Walter Scott's." This was the hand that, in 
the evenings of three summer weeks, wrote the two last vol- 
umes of Waverley. 

The gallant composure with which Scott, when he had dis- 



240 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

missed a work from his desk, awaited the decision of the pub- 
lic — and the healthy elasticity of spirit with which he could 
meanwhile turn his whole zeal upon new or different objects — 
are among the features in his character which will always, I 
believe, strike the student of literary history as most remark- 
able. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance to his 
fortunes of this his first novel. Yet before he had heard of its 
reception in the south, except the whisper of one partial friend, 
he started on a voyage which was likely to occupy two months, 
and during which he could hardly expect to receive any letters. 

He had been invited to accompany the Commissioners of the 
Northern Light Houses in their annual expedition ; and as its 
programme included the Hebrides, and he had already made 
some progress in the Lord of the Isles, the opportunity for re- 
freshing and enlarging his acquaintance with that region would 
alone have been a strong temptation. But there were many 
others. The trip was also to embrace the isles of Shetland 
and Orkney, and a vast extent of the mainland coasts, no part 
of which he had ever seen — or but for such an offer might ever 
have much chance of seeing. The Commissioners were all 
familiar friends of his — William Erskine, then Sheriff of the 
Orkneys, Robert Hamilton, Sheriff of Lanarkshire, Adam Duff, 
Sheriff of Forfarshire; but the real chief was the Surveyor- 
General, the celebrated engineer Mr. Stevenson, and Scott 
anticipated special pleasure in his society. " I delight," he 
told Morritt, "in these professional men of talent. They 
always give you some new lights by the peculiarity of their 
habits and studies — so different from the people who are 
rounded and smoothed and ground down for conversation, and 
who can say all that every other person says — and no more." 

To this voyage we owe many of the most striking passages 
in the Lord of the Isles, and the noble romance of the Pirate 
wholly. The leisure of the yacht allowed him to keep a very 
minute diary, from which he gave sundry extracts in his notes 
to both these works, and which may now be read entire in the 
larger memoirs of his life and correspondence. It abounds in 
interest — in sketches of scenery which could have come from 
his hand alone — inmost curious details of insular manners: 
but its chief value is in its artless portraiture of the penman. 
I question if any man ever drew his own character more fully 
or more pleasingly. We have before us, according to the scene 
and occasion, the poet, the antiquary, the magistrate, the 
planter, and the agriculturist ; but everywhere the warm yet 
sagacious philanthropist — everywhere the courtesy, based on 



VOYAGES. 241 

the unselfishness, of the thoroughbred gentleman. It con- 
cludes with these words : — " But I must not omit to say, that 
among five or six persons, some of whom were doubtless differ- 
ent in tastes and pursuits, there did not occur, during the close 
communication of more than six weeks aboard a small vessel, 
the slightest difference of opinion. Each seemed anxious to 
submit his own wishes to those of his friends. The conse- 
quence was, that by judicious arrangement all were gratified 
in their turn, and frequently he who made some sacrifices to 
the views of his companions, was rewarded by some unexpected 
gratification calculated particularly for his own amusement. 
We had constant exertion, a succession of wild and uncommon 
scenery, good humour on board, and objects of animation and 
interest when we went ashore: — Sed fugit inter ea — fugit ir- 
revocable tempus." 

I have been told by one of the companions of this voyage, 
that heartily as he entered throughout into their social enjoy- 
ments, they all perceived him, when inspecting for the first 
time scenes of remarkable grandeur, to be in such an abstracted 
and excited mood, that they felt it would be the kindest and 
discreetest plan to leave him to himself. " I often," said Lord 
Kinnedder, " on coming up from the cabin at night, found him 
pacing the deck rapidly, muttering to himself — and went to 
the forecastle, lest my presence should disturb him. I remem- 
ber, that at Loch Corriskin, in particular, he seemed quite 
overwhelmed with his feelings ; and we all saw it, and retir- 
ing unnoticed, left him to roam and gaze about by himself, 
until it was time to muster the party and be gone." Scott 
used to mention the surprise with which he himself witnessed 
Erskine's emotion on first entering the Cave of Staffa. " Would 
you believe it?" he said — "my poor Willie sat down and 
wept like a woman ! " Yet his own sensibilities, though be- 
trayed in a more masculine and sterner guise, were perhaps as 
keen as well as deeper than his amiable friend's. 
f'A few days before his voyage ended, he heard casually of 
the death of Harriet, Duchess of Buccleuch, who ever since 
the days of Lasswade had been his most kind friend. The 
sad intelligence was confirmed on his arrival in the Clyde, by 
a most touching and manly letter from the Duke. Its closing 
paragraph has these sentences : — " Endeavouring to the last 
to conceal her suffering, she evinced a fortitude, a resignation, 
a Christian courage, beyond all power of description. Her last 
injunction was to attend to her poor people. I have learned 
that the most truly heroic spirit may be lodged in the tender- 



242 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

est and the gentlest breast. If ever there was a proof of the 
efficacy of our religion in moments of the deepest affliction, 
and in the hour of death, it was exemplified in her conduct. 
I will endeavour to do in all things what I know she would 
wish. I have therefore determined to lay myself open to all 
the comforts my friends can afford me. I shall be most happy 
to cultivate their society as heretofore. I shall love them 
more and more because I know they loved her. Whenever it 
suits your convenience I shall be happy to see you here. I 
feel that it is particularly my duty not to make my house the 
house of mourning to my children ; for I know it was her de- 
cided opinion that it is most mischievous to give an early 
impression of gloom to the mind." 

The Duke survived for some years, and he continued in the 
line of conduct which he had from the first resolved upon ; but 
he never recovered the blow : and this no one perceived more 
clearly than Scott. 

In his letter to Morritt on reaching Edinburgh, he says 
(September 14th), — "We sailed from Leith, and skirted the 
Scottish coast, visiting the Buller of Buchan and other remark- 
able objects — went to Shetland — thence to Orkney — from 
thence round Cape Wrath to the Hebrides, making descents 
everywhere, where there was anything to be seen — thence to 
Lewis and the Long Island — to Skye — to Iona — and so 
forth, lingering among the Hebrides as long as we could. Then 
we stood over to the coast of Ireland, and visited the Giant's 
Causeway and Port Rush, where Dr. Bichardson, the inventor 
(discoverer, I would say,) of the celebrated florin grass, resides. 
By the way, he is a chattering charlatan, and his florin a mere 
humbug. But if he were Cicero, and his invention were pota- 
toes, or anything equally useful, I shoidd detest the recollection 
of the place and the man, for it was there I learned the death 
of my friend. Adieu, my dear Morritt; like poor Tom, 'I can- 
not daub it farther.' " 

As he passed through Edinburgh, the negotiation as to the 
Lord of the Isles, which had been protracted through several 
months, was completed : Constable agreeing to give fifteen 
hundred guineas for one-half of the copyright, while the other 
moiety was retained by the author. The same sum had been 
offered at an early stage of the affair, but it was not until now 
accepted, in consequence of the earnest wish of Messrs. Bal- 
lantyne to saddle the publisher of the new poem with another 
pyramid of their old " quire stock," — which, however, Con- 
stable ultimately persisted in refusing. It may easily be be- 



PUBLICATION OF WAVEBLET. 243 

lieved that John's management during a six weeks' absence 
had been such as to render it doubly convenient for the Poet to 
have this matter settled ; and it may also be supposed that the 
progress of Waverley during that interval had tended to put 
the chief parties in good humour with each other. For nothing 
can be more unfounded than the statement repeated in various 
memoirs of Scott's Life, that the sale of the first edition of this 
immortal Tale was slow. It appeared on the 7th of July, and 
the whole impression (1000 copies) had disappeared within 
five weeks ; an occurrence then unprecedented in the case of 
an anonymous novel, put forth at what is called among pub- 
lishers the dead season. A second edition of 2000 copies was 
at least projected by the 24th of the same month: — that ap- 
peared before the end of August, and it too had gone off so 
rapidly that Scott now, in September, found Constable eager to 
treat, on the same terms as before, for a third of 1000 copies. 
This third edition was published in October ; and when a fourth 
of the like extent was called for in November, I find Scott 
writing to John Ballantyne : — "I suppose Constable won't 
quarrel with a work on which he has netted L.612 in four 
months, with a certainty of making it L.1000 before the year 
is out." It would be idle to enumerate subsequent reprints. 
Well might Constable regret that he had not ventured to offer 
L.1000 for the whole copyright of Waverley ! 

The only private friends originally intrusted with his secret 
appear to have been Erskine and Morritt. But there was one 
with whom it would, of course, have been more than vain to 
affect any concealment. On the publication of the third edi- 
tion, I find him writing thus to his brother, then in Canada : — 
" Dear Tom, a novel here, called Waverley, has had enormous 
success. I sent you a copy, and will send you another with 
the Lord of the Isles which will be out at Christmas. The 
success which it has had, with some other circumstances, has 
induced people 

4 To lay the bantling at a certain door, 
Where lying store of faults, they'd fain heap more.' 1 

You will guess for yourself how far such a report has credibil- 
ity ; but by no means give the weight of your opinion to the 
Transatlantic public ; for you must know there is also a counter- 
report, that you have written the said Waverley. Send me a 
novel intermixing your exuberant and natural humour, with 

1 Garrick's Epilogue to Polly Honeycombe, 1760. 



244 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

any incidents and descriptions of scenery yon may see — par- 
ticularly with characters and traits of manners. I will give it 
all the cobbling that is necessary, and, if you do but exert 
yourself, I have not the least doubt it will be worth L.500 ; 
and, to encourage you, you may, when you send the MS., draw 
on me for L.100, at fifty days' sight — so that your labours will 
at any rate not be quite thrown away. You have more fun 
and descriptive talent than most people ; and all that you 
want — i.e. the mere practice of composition — I can supply, 
or the devil's in it. Keep this matter a dead secret, and look 
knowing when Waverley is spoken of. If you are not Sir John 
Falstaff, you are as good a man as he, and may therefore face 
Colville of the Dale. You may believe I don't want to make 
you the author of a book you have never seen ; but if people 
will, upon their own judgment, suppose so, and also on their 
own judgment give you L.500 to try your hand on a novel, I 
don't see that you are a pin's-point the worse. Mind that 
your MS. attends the draft. I am perfectly serious and confi- 
dent, that in two or three months you might clear the cobs. I 
beg my compliments to the hero who is afraid of Jeffrey's 
scalping-knife." 

In truth, no one of Scott's intimate friends ever had, or 
could have had, the slightest doubt as to the parentage of 
Waverley : nor, although he abstained from communicating the 
fact formally to most of them, did he ever affect any real con- 
cealment in the case of such persons ; nor, when any cir- 
cumstance arose which rendered the Avithholding of direct 
confidence on the subject incompatible with perfect freedom 
of feeling on both sides, did he hesitate to make the avowal. 
Xor do I believe that the mystification ever answered much 
purpose among literary men of eminence beyond the circle of 
his personal acquaintance. But it would be difficult to sup- 
pose that he had ever wished that to be otherwise; it was 
sufficient for him to set the mob of readers at gaze, and above 
all, to escape the annoyance of having productions, actually 
known to be his, made the daily and hourly topics of discus- 
sion in his presence — especially (perhaps) productions in a 
new walk, to which it might be naturally supposed that Lord 
Byron's poetical successes had diverted him. 

Mr. Jeffrey had known Scott from his youth — and in review- 
ing Waverley he was at no pains to conceal his conviction of 
its authorship. He quarrelled as usual with carelessness of 
style and some inartificialities of plot, but rendered justice 
to the substantial merits of the work. The Quarterly was far 



PUBLICATION OF WAVEBLEY. 245 

less favourable. Indeed the articles on Waverley and Guy 
Mannering in that journal will bear the test of ultimate opin- 
ion as badly as any critical pieces which our time has pro- 
duced. They are written in a captious, cavilling strain of 
quibble, which shews as complete blindness to the essential 
interest of the narrative, as the critic betrays on the subject of 
the Scottish dialogue, which forms its liveliest ornament, when 
he pronounces that to be " a dark dialect of Anglified Erse." 
With this remarkable exception, the censors of any note were 
not slow to confess their belief that, under a hackneyed name 
and trivial form, there had appeared a work of original crea- 
tive genius, worthy of being placed by the side of the very few 
real masterpieces of prose fiction. Loftier romance was never 
blended with easier, quainter humour, by Cervantes. In his 
familiar delineations he had combined the strength of Smollett 
with the native elegance and unaffected pathos of Goldsmith ; 
in his darker scenes he had revived that real tragedy which 
appeared to have left our theatre with the age of Shakspeare ; 
and elements of interest so diverse had been blended and 
interwoven with that nameless grace, which, more surely per- 
haps than even the highest perfection in the command of any 
one strain of sentiment, marks the master-mind cast in Nature's 
most felicitous mould. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

Publication of the Lord of the Isles and Guy Mannering — Meeting with 
Byron — Carlton House dirmer — Excursion to Paris — Publication of 
the Pield of Waterloo — Paul's Letters — The Antiquary — Harold the 
Dauntless — and the first Tales of my Landlord. 1815-1816. 

The voyage and these good news sent him back in high 
vigour to his desk at Abbotsford. For lighter work he had on 
hand the Memorie of the Soniervilles, a very curious specimen 
of family history, which he had undertaken to edit at the re- 
quest of his neighbour Lord Somerville. This was published 
in October. His serious labour was on the Lord of the Isles : 
of which only three cantos had been written when he concluded 
his bargain with Constable. He had carried with him in the 
Yacht some proof-sheets of a little book that Ballantyne was 
printing, entitled Poems illustrative of Traditions in Galloway 
and Ayrshire, by Joseph Train, Supervisor of Excise at Castle- 
Stewart: and, being struck with the notes, wrote, on his 
arrival at home, to the author, whom he had never seen, re- 
questing information concerning the ruins of Turnberry, on 
the Ayrshire coast, of which he wished to say something in 
connexion with one of Bruce's adventures in the forthcoming 
poem. Mr. Train did much more than Scott had meant to 
ask ; — for he had never himself been at Turnberry — but in- 
stantly rode over the hills to the spot, and transmitted ample 
details of the castle and all its legends : — not omitting a local 
superstition, that on the anniversary of the night when Bruce 
landed there from Arran, the meteoric gleam which had at- 
tended his voyage reappeared unfailingly in the same quarter 
of the heavens. What use Scott made of this and other parts 
of Mr. Train's paper, we see from the fifth canto of the Lord 
of the Isles and its notes : and the date of the communication 
(November 2) is therefore important as to the history of the 
composition ; but this was the beginning of a correspondence 
which had many other happy consequences. Prom this time 
the worthy supervisor, who had had many literary plans and 

246 



THE LOBD OF THE ISLES. 247 

schemes, dropt all notion of authorship in his own person, 
and devoted his leisure with most generous assiduity to the 
collection of whatever stories he fancied likely to be of use to 
his new acquaintance, who, after one or two meetings, had 
impressed him with unbounded enthusiasm of attachment. 
To no one individual did Scott owe so much of the materials 
of his novels : and one of the very earliest packets from Castle- 
Stewart (November 7) contained a ballad called the Durham 
Garland, which, reviving Scott's recollection of a story told in 
his youth by a servant of his father's, suggested the ground- 
work of the second of the series. James Ballantyne, in writ- 
ing by desire of "the Author of Waverley" to Miss Edgeworth, 
with a copy of the fourth edition of that novel (November 11), 
mentioned that another might soon be expected ; but, as he 
added, that it would treat of manners more ancient than those 
of 1745, it is clear that no outline resembling that of G-uy 
Mannering was then in the printer's view : most probably 
Scott had signified to him that he designed to handle the pe- 
riod of the Covenanters. There can, I think, be as little doubt 
that he began Guy Mannering as soon as Train's paper of the 
7th November reached him. 

He writes, on the 25th December, to Constable that he " had 
corrected the last proofs of the Lord of the Isles, and was set- 
ting out for Abbot sf or d to refresh the machine." And in what 
did his refreshment of the machine consist ? The poem was 
published on the 15th January ; and he says, on that day, to 
Morritt, " I want to shake myself free of Waverley, and ac- 
cordingly have made a considerable exertion to finish an odd 
little tale within such time as Avill mystify the public, I trust 

— unless they suppose me to be Briareus. Two volumes 
are already printed, and the only persons in my confidence, 
W. Erskine and Ballantyne, are of opinion that it is much more 
interesting than Waverley. It is a tale of private life, and 
only varied by the perilous exploits of smugglers and excise- 
men." Guy Mannering was published on the 24th February 

— that is, exactly two months after the Lord of the Isles was 
dismissed from the author's desk ; and — making but a narrow 
allowance for the operations of the transcriber, printer, book- 
seller, &c, I think the dates I have gathered together confirm 
the accuracy of what I have often heard Scott say, that his 
second novel "was the work of six weeks at a Christmas." 
Such was his recipe "for refreshing the machine." 

I am sorry to have to add, that this seventy of labour, like 
the repetition of it which had deplorable effects at a later 



248 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

period, was the result of difficulties about the discount of John 
Ballantyne's bills. 

Finding that Constable would not meet his views as to some 
of these matters, Mr. John suggested to Scott that some other 
house might prove more accommodating if he were permitted 
to offer them not only the new novel, but the next edition of 
the established favourite AYaverley : but upon this ingenious 
proposition Scott at once set his veto. " Dear John," he writes, 
'•your expedients are all wretched, as far as regards me. I 
never will give Constable, or any one, room to say I have 
broken my word with him in the slightest degree. If I lose 
everything else, I will at least keep my honour unblemished ; 
and I do hold myself bound in honour to offer him a Waverley, 
while he shall continue to comply with the conditions annexed?' 
The result was, that Messrs. Longman undertook the Guy Man- 
nering, relieving John of some of his encumbering stock ; but 
Longman, in compliance with Scott's wish, admitted Constable 
to a share in the adventure ; and with one or two exceptions, 
originating in circumstances nearly similar, the house of Con- 
stable published all the subsequent novels. 

I must not, however, forget that the Lord of the Isles was 
published a month before Guy Mannering. The poem was re- 
ceived with an interest much heightened by the recent and 
growing success of the mysterious Waverley. Its appearance, 
so rapidly following that novel, and accompanied with the an- 
nouncement of another prose tale, just about to be published, 
by the same hand, puzzled and confounded the mob of dul- 
ness. The more sagacious few said to themselves — Scott is 
making one serious effort more in his old line, and by this it 
will be determined whether he does or does not altogether 
renounce that for his new one. 

The most important remarks of the principal Reviewers on 
the details of the plot and execution are annexed to the last 
edition of the poem ; and shew such an exact coincidence of 
judgment in two masters of their calling, as had not hitherto 
been exemplified in the professional criticism of his metrical 
romances. The defects which both point out, are, I presume, 
but too completely explained by the preceding statement of 
the rapidity with which this, the last of those great perform- 
ances, had been thrown off ; nor do I see that either Reviewer 
has failed to do sufficient justice to the beauties which redeem 
the imperfections of the Lord of the Isles — except as regards 
the whole character of Bruce, its real hero, and the picture 
of the Battle of Bannockburn, which, now that one can compare 



THE LORD OF THE ISLES. 249 

these works from something like the same point of view, does 
not appear to me in the slightest particular inferior to the 
Flodden of Marmion. 

This poem is now, I believe, about as popular as Rokeby ; 
but it has never reached the same station in general favour 
with the Lay, Marmion, or the Lady of the Lake. The in- 
stant consumption of 1800 quartos, followed by 8vo reprints to 
the number of 12,000, would, in the case of almost any other 
author, have been splendid success ; but as compared with what 
he had previously experienced, even in his Rokeby, and still 
more so as compared with the enormous circulation at once 
attained by Lord Byron's early tales, which were then follow- 
ing each other in almost breathless succession, the falling off 
was decided. One evening, some days after the poem had been 
published, Scott requested James Ballantyne to call on him, 
and the Printer found him alone in his library, working at the 
third volume of Guy Mannering. — " Well, James," he said, " I 
have given you a week — what are people saying about the 
Lord of the Isles ? " — "I hesitated a little," says the Printer, 
" after the fashion of Gil Bias, but he speedily brought the 
matter to a point — ' Come,' he said, i speak out, my good fel- 
low; what has put it into your head to be on so much cere- 
mony with me all of a sudden ? But, I see how it is, the result 
is given in one word — Disappointment.'' My silence admitted 
his inference to the fullest extent. His countenance certainly 
did look rather blank for a few seconds ; in truth, he had been 
wholly unprepared for the event ; for it is a singular fact, that 
before the public, or rather the booksellers, had given their 
decision, he no more knew whether he had written well or ill, 
than whether a die thrown out of a box was to turn up a size 
or an ace. However, he instantly resumed his spirit, and ex- 
pressed his wonder rather that his poetical popularity should 
have lasted so long, than that it should have now at last given 
way. At length he said, with perfect cheerfulness, ' Well, well, 
James, so be it — but you know we must not droop, for we 
can't afford to give over. Since one line has failed, we must 
just stick to something else : ' — and so he dismissed me, and re- 
sumed this novel. . . . He spoke thus, probably, unaware of 
the undiscovered wonders then slumbering in his mind. Yet 
still he could not but have felt that the production of a few 
poems was nothing in comparison of what must be in reserve 
for him, for he was at this time scarcely more than forty. An 
evening or two after, I called again on him, and found on the 
table a copy of the Giaour, which he seemed to have been read- 



250 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

ing. Having an enthusiastic young lady in my house, I asked 
him if I might carry the book home with me, but chancing to 
glance on the autograph blazon,-' To the Monarch of Parnassus 
from one of his subjects,' instantly retracted my request, and said 
I had not observed Lord Byron's inscription before. 'What 
inscription ? ' said he ; ' yes, I had forgot, but inscription or 
no inscription, you are equally welcome.' I again took it up, 
and he continued — 'James, Byron hits the mark where I don't 
even pretend to fledge my arrow.' At this time he had never 
seen Byron, but I knew he meant soon to be in London, when, 
no doubt, the mighty consummation of the meeting of the two 
bards would be accomplished — and I ventured to say that he 
must be looking forward to it with some interest. His coun- 
tenance became fixed, and he answered impressively, ' 0, of 
course.' In a minute or two afterwards he rose from his chair, 
paced the room at a very rapid rate, which was his practice in 
certain moods of mind, then made a dead halt, and bursting into 
an extravaganza of laughter, 'James,' cried he, 'I'll tell you 
what Byron should say to me when we are about to accost each 
other — 

Art thou the man whom men famed Grizzle call ? 

And then how germane would be my answer — 

Art thou the still more famed Tom Thumb the small ? ' 

This," concludes Mr. B., "kept him full of mirth for the rest 
of the evening." 

The whole scene is delightfully characteristic : and not more 
of Scott than of his printer ; for Ballantyne, with all his pro- 
found worship of his benefactor, was an undoubting acquiescer 
in "the decision of the public, or rather of the booksellers;" 
and among the many absurdities into which his reverence for 
the popedom of Paternoster-Row led him, I never could but 
consider with special astonishment, the facility with which he 
seemed to have adopted the notion that the Byron of 1814 was 
really entitled to supplant Scott as a popular poet. Appre- 
ciating, as no man of his talents could fail to do, the original 
glow and depth of Childe Harold, he always appeared quite 
blind to the fact that in the Giaour, the Bride of Abydos, 
Parisina, and indeed, in all his early narratives, Byron owed 
at least half his success to imitation of Scott, and no trivial 
share of the rest to the lavish use of materials which Scott 
never employed, only because his genius was under the guid- 



GUT MANNEBING. 251 

ance of high feelings of moral rectitude. All this Lord Byron 
himself seems to have felt most completely : witness his letters 
and diaries ; and I think I see many symptoms that both the 
decision of the million, and its index, " the decision of the book- 
sellers," tend the same way at present. 

If January brought " disappointment," there was abundant 
consolation in store for February 1815. Guy Mannering was 
received with eager curiosity, and pronounced by acclamation 
fully worthy to share the honours of Waverley. The easy 
transparent flow of its style ; the beautiful simplicity, and here 
and there the wild solemn magnificence of its sketches of 
scenery ; the rapid, ever heightening interest of the narrative ; 
the unaffected kindliness of feeling, the manly purity of thought, 
everywhere mingled with a gentle humour and a homely sagacity ; 
but, above all, the rich variety and skilful contrast of characters 
and manners at once fresh in fiction, and stamped with the un- 
forgeable seal of truth and nature; these were charms that 
spoke to every heart and mind ; and the few murmurs of pedantic 
criticism were lost in the voice of general delight, which never 
fails to welcome the invention that introduces to the sympathy 
of imagination a new group of immortal realities. 

The first edition was, like that of Waverley, in three little 
volumes, with a humility. of paper and printing which the 
meanest novelist would now disdain to imitate; the price a 
guinea. The 2000 copies of which it consisted were sold the 
day after the publication; and within three months came a 
second and a third impression, making together 5000 copies 
more. Of the subsequent vogue it is needless to speak. 

On the rising of the Court of Session in March, Scott went 
by sea to London with his wife and their eldest girl. Six years 
had elapsed since he last appeared in the metropolis ; and bril- 
liant as his reception had then been, it was still more so on the 
present occasion. Scotland had been visited in the interim, 
chiefly from the interest excited by his writings, by crowds of 
the English nobility, most of whom had found introduction to 
his personal acquaintance — not a few had partaken of his 
hospitality at Ashestiel or Abbotsf ord. The generation among 
whom, I presume, a genius of this order feels his own influence 
with the proudest and sweetest confidence — on whose fresh 
minds and ears he has himself made the first indelible im- 
pressions — the generation with whose earliest romance of the 
heart and fancy his idea had been blended, was now grown to 
the full stature ; the success of these recent novels, seen on 
every table, the subject of every conversation, had, with those 



252 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

who did not doubt their parentage, far more than counter- 
weighed his declination, dubious after all, in the poetical bal- 
ance ; while the mystery that hung over them quickened the 
curiosity of the hesitating and conjecturing many — and the 
name on which ever and anon some new circumstance accumu- 
lated stronger suspicion, loomed larger through the haze in 
which he had thought fit to envelop it. Moreover, this was a 
period of high national pride and excitement. At such a time, 
Prince and people were well prepared to hail him who, more 
perhaps than any other master of the pen, had contributed to 
sustain the spirit of England throughout the struggle, which 
was as yet supposed to have been terminated on the field of 
Toulouse. " Thank Heaven you are coming at last " — Joanna 
Baillie had written a month or two before — " Make up your 
mind to be stared at only a little less than the Czar of Muscovy 
or old Bliicher." 

And now took place James Ballantyne's " mighty consumma- 
tion of the meeting of the two bards." " Report," says Scott 
to Moore, " had prepared me to meet a man of peculiar habits 
and a quick temper, and I had some doubts whether we were 
likely to suit each other in society. I was most agreeably dis- 
appointed in this respect. I found Lord Byron in the highest 
degree courteous, and even kind. We met for an hour or two 
almost daily, in Mr. Murray's drawing-room, and found a great 
deal to say to each other. We also met frequently in parties 
and evening society, so that for about two months I had the 
advantage of a considerable intimacy with this distinguished 
individual. Our sentiments agreed a good deal, except upon 
the subjects of religion and politics, upon neither of which I 
was inclined to believe that Lord Byron entertained very fixed 
opinions. I remember saying to him, that I really thought that 
if he lived a few years he would alter his sentiments. He an- 
swered, rather sharply — ' I suppose you are one of those who 
prophesy I shall turn Methodist.' I replied — 'No; I don't 
expect your conversion to be of such an ordinary kind. I would 
rather look to see you retreat upon the Catholic faith, and dis- 
tinguish yourself by the austerity of your penances.' He smiled 
gravely, and seemed to allow I might be right. On politics, 
he used sometimes to express a high strain of what is now 
called Liberalism; but it appeared to me that the pleasure it 
afforded him, as a vehicle for displaying his wit and satire 
against individuals in office, was at the bottom of this habit of 
thinking, rather than any real conviction of the political prin- 
ciples on which he talked. He was certainly proud of his 



MEETING WITH BYRON. *v- 253 

rank and ancient family, and, in that respect, as much an 
aristocrat as was consistent with good sense and good breeding. 
Some disgusts, how adopted I know not, seemed to me to have 
given this peculiar and (as it appeared to me) contradictory 
cast of mind; but, at heart, I would have termed Byron a 
patrician on principle. . . . Lord Byron's reading did not 
seem to me to have been very extensive, either in poetry or 
history. Having the advantage of him in that respect, and 
possessing a good competent share of such reading as is little 
read, I was sometimes able to put under his eye objects which 
had for him the interest of novelty. I remember particularly 
repeating to him the fine poem of Hardyknute, an imitation 
of the old Scottish ballad, with which he was so much affected, 
that some one who was in the same apartment asked me what 
I could possibly have been telling Byron by which he was 
so much agitated. . . . Like the old heroes in Homer, we 
exchanged gifts. I gave Byron a beautiful dagger mounted 
with gold, which had been the property of the redoubted Elfi 
Bey. But I was to play the part of Diomed in the Iliad, for 
Byron sent me, some time after, a large sepulchral vase of 
silver. It was full of dead men's bones, and had inscriptions 
on two sides of the base. One ran thus : — ' The bones con- 
tained in this urn were found in certain ancient sepulchres 
within the long walls of Athens, in the month of February 
1811.' The other face bears the lines of Juvenal — ' Expende 
— quot libras in duce summo inveniesf, — 3fors sola fatetur 
quantula sint hominum corpllscvla. , To these I have added 
a third inscription, in these words — l The gift of Lord Byron 
to Walter Scott.' There was a letter with this vase, more 
valuable to me than the gift itself, from the kindness with 
which the donor expressed himself towards me. I left it 
naturally in the urn with the bones ; but it is now missing. 
As the theft was not of a nature to be practised by a mere 
domestic, I am compelled to suspect the inhospitality of some 
individual of higher station, most gratuitously exercised cer- 
tainly, since, after what I have here said, no one will probably 
choose to boast of possessing this literary curiosit}^. We had 
a good deal of laughing, I remember, on what the public might be 
supposed to think, or say, concerning the gloomy and ominous 
nature of our mutual gifts. He was often melancholy — almost 
gloomy. When I observed him in this humour, I used either 
to wait till it went off of its own accord, or till some natural 
and easy mode occurred of leading him into conversation, when 
the shadows almost always left his countenance, like the mist 



254 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

rising from a landscape. In conversation, he was very ani- 
mated. ... I think I also remarked in his temper starts of 
suspicion, when he seemed to pause and consider whether 
there had not been a secret, and perhaps offensive, meaning in 
something casually said to him. In this case I also judged 
it best to let his mind, like a troubled spring, work itself clear, 
which it did in a minute or two. I was considerably older, 
you will recollect, than my noble friend, and had no reason 
to fear his misconstruing my sentiments towards him, nor had 
I ever the slightest reason to doubt that they were kindly re- 
turned on his part. If I had occasion to be mortified by the 
display of genius which threw into the shade such pretensions 
as I was then supposed to possess, I might console myself 
that, in my own case, the materials of mental happiness had 
been mingled in a greater proportion. ... I have always 
continued to think that a crisis of life was arrived, in which a 
new career of fame was opened to him, and that had he been 
permitted to start upon it, he would have obliterated the mem- 
ory of such parts of his life as friends would wish to forget." 

It was also in the spring of 1815 that Scott had, for the first 
time, the honour of being presented to the Prince Regent. His 
Royal Highness, on reading his Edinburgh Address, had said 
to William Dundas, that " Walter Scott's charming behaviour 
about the laureateship made him doubly desirous of seeing him 
at Carlton House : " and there had been other messages from 
the Prince's librarian. On hearing from Mr. Croker (then 
Secretary to the Admiralty) that Scott was to be in town by 
the middle of March, the Prince said — " Let me know when 
he comes, and I'll get up a snug little dinner that will suit 
him;" and, after he had been presented and graciously re- 
ceived at the levee, he was invited to dinner accordingly, 
through his excellent friend Mr. Adam (afterwards Lord Chief 
Commissioner of the Jury Court in Scotland), 1 who at that time 
held a confidential office in the royal household. The Eegent 
had consulted with Mr. Adam also as to the composition of the 
party. " Let us have," said he, " just a few friends of his own 
— and the more Scotch the better ; " and both the Chief Com- 
missioner and Mr. Croker assure me that the party was the 

1 This most amiable and venerable gentleman, my dear and kind 
friend, died at Edinburgh on the 17th February 1839, in the 89th year of 
his age. He retained his strong mental faculties in their perfect vigour 
to the last days of this long life, and with them the warmth of social feel- 
ings which had endeared him to all who were so happy as to have any 
opportunity of knowing him — to none more than Scott. 



CARLTON HOUSE DINNER. 255 

most interesting and agreeable one in their recollection. It 
comprised, I believe, the Duke of York — the late Duke of 
Gordon (then Marquess of Huntly) — the late Marquess of 
Hertford (then Lord Yarmouth) — the Earl of Fife — and 
Scott's early friend Lord Melville. " The Prince and Scott," 
says Mr. Croker, " were the two most brilliant story-tellers in 
their several ways, that I have ever happened to meet ; they 
were both aware of their forte, and both exerted themselves that 
evening with delightful effect. On going home, I really could 
not decide which of them had shone the most. The Eegent 
was enchanted with Scott, as Scott with him ; and on all his 
subsequent visits to London, he was a frequent guest at the 
royal table." The Lord Chief Commissioner remembers that 
the Prince was particularly delighted with the poet's anecdotes 
of the old Scotch judges and lawyers, which his Royal High- 
ness sometimes cajiped by ludicrous traits of certain ermined 
sages of his own acquaintance. Scott told, among others, a story 
which he was fond of telling ; and the commentary of his Royal 
Highness on hearing it amused Scott, who often mentioned it 
afterwards. The anecdote is this : — A certain Judge, whenever 
he went on a particular circuit, was in the habit of visiting a 
gentleman of good fortune in the neighbourhood of one of the 
assize towns, and staying at least one night, which, being both 
of them ardent chess-players, they usually concluded with their 
favourite game. One Spring circuit the battle was not decided 
at day-break, so the Judge said — " Weel, Donald, I must e'en 
come back this gate in the harvest, and let the game lie ower 
for the present ; " and back he came in October, but not to his 
old friend's hospitable house; for that gentleman had in the 
interim been apprehended on a capital charge (of forgery), and 
his name stood on the Porteous Roll, or list of those who were 
about to be tried under his former guest's auspices. The laird 
was indicted and tried accordingly, and the jury returned a 
verdict of guilty. The Judge forthwith put on his cocked hat 
(which answers to the black cap in England), and pronounced 
the sentence of the law in the usual terms — "To be hanged by 
the neck until you be dead; and may the Lord have mercy 
upon your unhappy soul ! " Having concluded this awful for- 
mula in his most sonorous cadence, the Judge, dismounting his 
formidable beaver, gave a familiar nod to his unfortunate ac- 
quaintance, and said to him in a sort of chuckling whisper — 
" And now, Donald, my man, I think I've checkmated you for 
ance." The Regent laughed heartily at this specimen of judi- 
cial humour; and "V faith, Walter," said he, "this old big- wig 



256 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

seems to have taken things as coolly as my tyrannical self. 
Don't you remember Tom Moore's description of me at break- 
fast — 

' The table spread with tea and toast, 
Death-warrants and the Mornins; Post' ? " 



Towards midnight, the Prince called for " a bumper, with all 
the honours, to the Author of Waverley," and looked signifi- 
cantly, as he was charging his own glass, to Scott. Scott 
seemed somewhat puzzled for a moment, but instantly recover- 
ing himself, and filling his glass to the brim, said, "Your 
Royal Highness looks as if you thought I had some claim to 
the honours of this toast. I have no such pretensions, but shall 
take good care that the real Simon Pure hears of the high com- 
pliment that has now been paid him." He then drank off his 
claret, and joined in the cheering, which the Prince himself 
timed. But before the company could resume their seats, his 
Royal Highness exclaimed — " Another of the same, if you 
please, to the Author of Marmion — and now, Walter, my man, 
I've checkmated you for ance." The second bumper was fol- 
lowed by cheers still more prolonged : and Scott then rose and 
returned thanks in a short address, which struck the Lord 
Chief Commissioner as " alike grave and graceful." This story 
has been circulated in a very perverted shape. I now give it 
on the authority of my venerated friend. — He adds, that hav- 
ing occasion, the day after, to call on the Duke of York, his 
Royal Highness said to him — "Upon my word, Adam, my 
brother went rather too near the wind about Waverley — but 
nobody could have turned the thing more prettily than Walter 
Scott did — and upon the whole I never had better fun." l 

The Regent, as was his custom with those he most delighted 
to honour, uniformly addressed the poet, even at their first 
dinner, by his Christian name, " Walter." 

Before he left town, he again dined at Carlton House, when 
the party was a still smaller one than before, and the merri- 
ment, if possible, still more free. That nothing might be 

1 Since this narrative was first published, I have been told by two 
gentlemen who were at this dinner, that, according to their recollection, 
the Prince did not on that occasion run " so near the wind" as my text 
represents : and I am inclined to believe that a subsequent scene may 
have been unconsciously blended with a gentler rehearsal. The Chief 
Commissioner had promised to revise my sheets for the second edition ; 
but alas ! he never did so — and I must now leave the matter as it 
stands. 



CARLTON HOUSE DINNER. 257 

wanting, the Prince sung several capital songs in the course 
of that evening — as witness the lines in Sultan Serendib — 

" I love a Prince will bid the bottle pass, 
Exchanging with his subjects glance and glass ; 
In fitting time can, gayest of the gay, 
Keep up the jest and mingle in the lay. 
Such Monarchs best our freeborn humour suit, 
But despots must be stately, stern, and mute." 

Before he returned to Edinburgh, on the 22d of May, the 
Regent sent him a gold snuff-box, set in brilliants, with a 
medallion of his Royal Highness's head on the lid, "as a testi- 
mony " (writes Mr. Adam, in transmitting it) " of the high 
opinion his Royal Highness entertains of your genius and 
merit." 

I transcribe what follows from James Ballantyne's Memo- 
randa : — " After Mr. Scott's first interview with his Sover- 
eign, one or two intimate friends took the liberty of inquiring, 
what judgment he had formed of the Regent's talents ? He 
declined giving any definite answer — but repeated, that 'he 
was the first gentleman he had seen — certainly the first 
English gentleman of his day; — there was something about 
him which, independently of the prestige, the " divinity, which 
hedges a King," marked him as standing entirely by himself : 
but as to his abilities, spoken of as distinct from his charming 
manners, how could any one form a fair judgment of that man 
who introduced whatever subject he chose, discussed it just as 
long as he" chose, and dismissed it when he chose ? ' " Ballan- 
tyne adds — " What I have now to say is more important, not 
only in itself, but as it will enable you to give a final contra- 
diction to an injurious report which has been in circulation ; 
viz. that the Regent asked him as to the authorship of Waver- 
ley, and received a distinct and solemn denial. I took the bold 
freedom of requesting to know from him whether his Royal 
Highness had questioned him on that subject, and what had 
been his answer. He glanced at me with a look of wild sur- 
prise, and said — 'What answer I might have made to such 
a question, put to me by my Sovereign, perhaps I do not, or 
rather perhaps I do, know ; but I was never put to the test. 
He is far too well-bred a man ever to put so ill-bred a ques- 
tion.'" 

During his brief residence in London, Scott lost his dear 
friend George Ellis — which threw a heavy cloud over a bright 
sky. But the public events of the time must alone have been 



258 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

sufficient to keep liim in a state of fervid excitement. Before 
his return to the North, Napoleon had been fully reinstated, 
and the allied forces were fast assembling in the Netherlands. 
His official duties compelled him to defer once more his old 
anxiety for " a peep at Wellington and his merry men," until 
the fate of Europe had been decided at Waterloo. But his 
friends were well aware of his resolution to visit the Continent' 
as soon as the session was over ; and he very kindly accepted 
the proposal of three young neighbours of Tweedside who were 
eager to make the excursion in his society. 

With these gentlemen, Alexander Pringle of Whytbank 
(since M.P. for Selkirkshire), Robert Bruce (now Sheriff of 
Argyle), and his kinsman, the late accomplished John Scott 
of Gala, he left Edinburgh accordingly on the 27th of July. 
They travelled by the stage-coach, and took the route of Cam- 
bridge ; for Gala and Whytbank, both members of that univer- 
sity, were desirous of showing its architecture to their friend. 
After this wish had been gratified, they proceeded to Harwich. 
" The weather was beautiful," says Gala, " so we all went out- 
side the coach. At starting, there was a general complaint of 
thirst, the consequence of some experiments over-night on the 
celebrated bishop of my Alma Mater; our friend, however, was 
in great glee, and never was a merrier basket than he made it 
all the morning. He had cautioned us, on leaving Edinburgh, 
never to name names in such situations, and our adherence to 
this rule was rewarded by some amusing incidents. For ex- 
ample, as we entered the town where we were to dine, a heavy- 
looking man, who was to stop there, took occasion to thank 
Scott for the pleasure his anecdotes afforded him : ' You have 
a good memory, sir/ said he : ' mayhap, now, you sometimes 
write down what you hear or be a-reading about ? ' He an- 
swered, very gravely, that he did occasionally put down a few 
notes, if anything struck him particularly. In the afternoon, 
it happened that he sat on the box, while the rest of us were 
behind him. Here, by degrees, he became absorbed in his own 
reflexions. He frequently repeated to himself, or composed 
perhaps, for a good while, and often smiled or raised his hand, 
seeming completely occupied and amused. His neighbour, a 
vastly scientific and rather grave professor, in a smooth drab 
Benjamin and broad-brimmed beaver, cast many a curious side- 
long glance at him, evidently suspecting that all was not right 
with the upper story, but preserved perfect politeness. The 
poet was, however, discovered by the captain of the vessel in 
which we crossed to Helvoetsluys ; and a perilous passage it 



EXCURSION TO PARIS. 259 

was, chiefly in consequence of the unceasing tumblers in which 
this worthy kept drinking his health." 

Before Scott reached Harwich, he received Constable's accept- 
ance of an offer to compose, during the journey, a series of 
sketches, which he undertook to have ready for publication "by 
the second week of September " ; and thenceforth he threw his 
daily letters to his wife into the form of communications meant 
for an imaginary group, consisting of a spinster sister, a statis- 
tical laird, a rural clergyman of the Presbyterian Kirk, and a 
brother, a veteran officer on half -pay. The rank of this last 
personage corresponded, however, exactly with that of his own 
elder brother, John Scott, who also, like the Major of the book, 
had served in the Duke of York's unfortunate campaign of 
1797'; the sister is only a slender disguise for his aunt Chris- 
tian Eutherfurd, already often mentioned; Lord Somerville, 
long President of the Board of Agriculture, was Paul's laird ; 
and the shrewd and unbigoted Dr. Douglas of Galashiels was 
his " minister of the gospel." These epistles, after having 
been devoured by the little circle at Abbotsford, were trans- 
mitted to Major John Scott, his mother, and Miss Putherfurd, 
in Edinburgh; from their hands they passed to those of James 
Ballantyne and Mr. Erskine, both of whom assured me that 
the copy ultimately sent to the press consisted, in great part, 
of the identical sheets that had successively reached Melrose 
through the post. The rest had of course been, as Ballantyne 
expresses it, " somewhat cobbled " ; but, on the whole, Paul's 
Letters to his Kinsfolk are to be considered as a true and faith- 
ful journal of this expedition. The kindest of husbands and 
fathers never portrayed himself with more unaffected truth 
than in this vain effort, if such he really fancied he was mak- 
ing, to sustain the character of " a cross old bachelor." The 
whole man, just as he was, breathes in every line, with all his 
compassionate and benevolent sympathy of heart, all his sharp- 
ness of observation, and sober shrewdness of reflexion ; all his 
enthusiasm for nature, for country life, for simple manners 
and simple pleasures, mixed up with an equally glowing enthu- 
siasm, at which many may smile, for the tiniest relics of 
feudal antiquity — aud last, not least, a pulse of physical 
rapture for the "circumstance of war," which bears witness 
to the blood of Boltfoot and Fire-the-Braes. I shall not tres- 
pass on the reader of that delightful record, except by a few 
particulars which I owe to the juniors of the party. 

Paul modestly acknowledges in his last letter, the personal 
attentions which he received, while in Paris, from Lords Cath- 



260 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

cart, Aberdeen, and Castlereagh ; and hints that, through their 
intervention, he had witnessed several of the splendid fetes 
given by the Duke of Wellington, where he saw half the 
crowned heads of Europe grouped among the gallant soldiers 
who had cut a way for them to the guilty capital of France. 
Scott's reception, however, had been distinguished to a degree 
of which Paul's language gives no notion. The Noble Lords 
above named welcomed him with cordial satisfaction ; and the 
Duke of Wellington, to whom he was first presented by Sir 
John Malcolm, treated him then, and ever afterwards, with 
a kindness and confidence, which, I have often heard him say, 
he considered as "the highest distinction of his life." He 
used to tell, with great effect, the circumstances of his intro- 
duction to the Emperor Alexander, at a dinner given by the 
Earl of Cathcart. Scott appeared, on that occasion, in the 
blue and red dress of the Selkirkshire Lieutenancy; and 
the Czar's first question, glancing at his lameness, was, " In 
what affair were you wounded ? " Scott signified that he 
suffered from a natural infirmity; upon which the Emperor 
said, " I thought Lord Cathcart mentioned that you had 
served." Scott observed that the Earl looked a little embar- 
rassed at this, and promptly answered, " yes ; in a certain 
sense I have served — that is, in the yeomanry cavalry; a 
home force resembling the Landwehr, or Landsturm." — 
"Under what commander?" — "Sous M. le Chevalier Eae." — 
" Were you ever engaged ? " — " In some slight actions — such 
as the battle of the Cross Causeway and the affair of Moredun- 
Mill." — " This," says Mr. Pringle of Wnytbank, "was, as he 
saw in Lord Cathcart's face, quite sufficient, so he managed to 
turn the conversation to some other subject." It was at the 
same dinner that he first met Platoff, 1 who seemed to take 
a great fancy to him, though, adds my friend, " I really don't 
think they had any common language to converse in." Next 
day, however, when Pringle and Scott were walking together 
in the Kue de la Paix, the Hetman happened to come up, 
cantering with some of his Cossacks ; as soon as he saw Scott, 
he jumped off his horse, leaving it to the Pulk, and, running 

1 Scott acknowledges, in a note to St. Bonan's Well (vol. i. p. 252), that 
he took from Platoff this portrait of Mr. Touchwood : — " His face, which 
at the distance of a yard or two seemed hale and smooth, appeared, when 
closely examined, to be seamed with a million of wrinkles, crossing each 
other in every direction possible, but as fine as if drawn by the point of a 
very tine needle." Thus did every little peculiarity remain treasured in 
his memory, to be used in due time for giving the air of minute reality to 
some imaginary personage. 



PAUL'S LETTERS. 261 

up to him, kissed him on each side of the cheek with extraor- 
dinary demonstrations of affection — and then made him 
understand, through an aide-de-camp, that he wished him to 
join his staff at the next great review, when he would take 
care to mount him on the gentlest of his Ukraine horses. 

It will seem less surprising that Scott should have been 
honoured with much attention by the leading soldiers and 
statesmen of Germany then in Paris. The fame of his poetry 
had already been established for some years in that country. 
Yet it may be doubted whether Blucher had heard of Marmion 
any more than Platoff ; and old Blucher struck Scott's fellow- 
travellers as taking more interest in him than any foreign gen- 
eral, except only the Hetman. 

A striking passage in Paul's tenth letter indicates the high 
notion which Scott had formed of the personal qualities of the 
Prince of Orange. After depicting, with almost prophetic 
accuracy, the dangers to which the then recent union of Hol- 
land and Belgium must be exposed, he concludes with express- 
ing his hope that the firmness and sagacity of the King of the 
Netherlands, and the admiration which his heir's character 
and bearing had already excited among all, even Belgian 
observers, might ultimately prove effective in redeeming this 
difficult experiment from the usual failure of " arronclisse- 
ments, indemnities, and all the other terms of modern date, 
under sanction of which cities and districts, and even king- 
doms, have been passed from one government to another, as 
the property of lands or stock is transferred by a bargain 
between private parties." 

It is not less curious to compare, with the subsequent course 
of affairs in France, the following brief hint in Paul's 16th let- 
ter : — " The general rallying point of the Liberalistes is an 
avowed dislike to the present monarch and his immediate con- 
nexions. They will sacrifice, they pretend, so much to the 
general inclinations of Europe, as to select a king from the 
Bourbon race ; but he must be one of their own choosing, and 
the Duke of Orleans is most familiar in their mouths." Thus, in 
its very bud, had his eye detected the conjuration de quinze cms ! 

As yet, the literary reputation of Scott had made but little- 
way among the French nation ; but some few of their eminent 
men vied even with the enthusiastic Germans in their courteous 
and unwearied attentions to him. The venerable Chevalier, in 
particular, seemed anxious to embrace every opportunity of 
acting as his cicerone; and many mornings were spent in 
exploring, under his guidance, the most remarkable scenes and 



262 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

objects of historical and antiquarian interest both in Paris and 
its neighbourhood. He several times also entertained Scott 
and his young companions at dinner ; but the last of those din- 
ners was thoroughly poisoned by a preliminary circumstance. 
The poet, on entering the saloon, was presented to a stranger, 
whose physiognomy struck him as the most hideous he had 
ever seen ; nor was his disgust lessened, when he found, a few 
minutes afterwards, that he had undergone the accolade pf 
David " of the blood-stained brush." 

From Paris, Mr. Bruce and Mr. Pringle went on to Switzer- 
land, leaving the Poet and Gala to return home together, which 
they did by way of Dieppe, Brighton, and London. It was 
here, on the 14th of September, that Scott had his last meet- 
ing with Byron. He carried his young friend in the morning 
to call on Lord Byron, who agreed to dine with them at their 
hotel, where he met also Charles Mathews and Daniel Terry. 
Gala has recorded it in his note-book as the most interest- 
ing day he ever spent. "How I did stare," he says, "at 
Byron's beautiful pale face, like a spirit's — good or evil. 
But he was bitter — what a contrast to Scott ! Among other 
anecdotes of British prowess and spirit, Scott mentioned that 

a young gentleman had been awfully shot in 

the head while conveying an order from the Duke, and yet 
staggered on, and delivered his message when at the point of 
death. ' Ha ! ' said Byron, ' I daresay he could do as well as 
most people without his head — it was never of much use to 
him.' Waterloo did not delight him, probably — and Scott 
could talk or think of scarcely anything else." 

Mathews accompanied them as far as Warwick and Kenil- 
worth, both of which castles the poet had seen before, but 
now re-examined with particular curiosity. They spent a 
night at Sheffield ; and early next morning Scott sallied forth 
to provide himself with a planter's knife of the most complex 
contrivance and finished workmanship. Having secured one 
to his mind, and which for many years after was his constant 
pocket-companion, he wrote his name on a card, "Walter 
Scott, Abbotsford," and directed it to be engraved on the 
handle. On his mentioning this acquisition at breakfast, 
young Gala expressed his desire to equip himself in like fash- 
ion, and was directed to the shop accordingly. When he had 
purchased a similar knife, and produced his name in turn for 
the engraver, the master cutler eyed the signature for a 
moment, and exclaimed — "John Scott of Gala! Well, I 
hope your ticket may serve me in as good stead as another Mr. 



INCIDENTS OF HIS RETURN. 263 

Scott's has just done. Upon my word, one of my best men, 
an honest fellow from the North, went ont of his senses when 
he saw it — he offered me a week's work if I would let him 
keep it to himself — and I took /Saunders at his word." Scott 
used to talk of this as one of the most gratifying compliments 
he ever received in his literary capacity. 

In a letter to Morritt, he says : — " We visited Corby Castle 
on our return to Scotland, which remains, in point of situation, 
as beautiful as when its walks were celebrated by David Hume, 
in the only rhymes he was ever known to be guilty of. Here 
they are, from a pane of glass in an inn at Carlisle : — 

' Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl, 
Here godless boys God's glories squall, 
Here Scotchmen's heads do guard the wall, 
But Corby's walks atone for all.' 

Would it not be a good quiz to advertise The Poetical Works 
of David Hume, with notes, critical, historical, and so forth — 
with an historical inquiry into the use of eggs for breakfast ; 
a physical discussion on the causes of their being addled; a 
history of the English Church music, and of the choir of Car- 
lisle in particular ; a full account of the affair of 1745, with the 
trials, last speeches, and so forth of the poor plaids who were 
strapped up at Carlisle ; and lastly, a full and particular de- 
scription of Corby, with the genealogy of every family who ever 
possessed it ? I think, even without more than the usual waste 
of margin, the Poems of David would make a decent twelve 
shilling touch. I shall think about it when I have exhausted 
mine own century of inventions " 

Peaching Abbotsford, Scott found with his family his old 
friend Mr. Skene of Pubislaw, who had expected him to come 
home sooner, and James Ballantyne, who had arrived with a 
copious budget of bills, calenders, booksellers' letters, and proof- 
sheets. From each of these visitors' memoranda I now extract 
an anecdote. Mr. Skene's is of a small enough matter, but 
still it places the man so completely before myself, that I 
am glad he thought it worth setting down. " During Scott's 
absence," says his friend, " his wife had had the tiny drawing- 
room of the cottage fitted up with new chintz furniture — every- 
thing had been set out in the best style — and she and her girls 
had been looking forward to the pleasure which they supposed 
the little surprise of the arrangements would give him. He was 
received in the spruce fresh room, set himself comfortably down 
in the chair prepared for him, and remained in the full enjoy- 



264 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

ment of his own fireside, and a return to liis family circle, with- 
out the least consciousness that any change had taken place — 
until, at length, Mrs. Scott's patience could hold out no longer, 
and his attention was expressly called to it. The vexation he 
shewed at having caused such a disappointment, struck me 
as amiably characteristic — and in the course of the evening 
he every now and then threw out some word of admiration to 
reconsole mamma." 

Ballantyne's note of their next morning's conference is in 
these terms : — " He had just been reviewing a pageant of 
emperors and kings, which seemed, like another Field of the 
Cloth of Gold, to have been got up to realise before his eyes 
some of his own splendid descriptions. I begged him to tell 
me what was the general impression left on his mind. He 
answered, that he might now say he had seen and conversed 
with all classes of society, from the palace to the cottage, and 
including every conceivable shade of science and ignorance — 
but that he had never felt awed or abashed except in the pres- 
ence of one man — the Duke of Wellington. I expressed some 
surprise. He said I ought not, for that the Duke of Wellington 
possessed every one mighty quality of the mind in a higher de- 
gree than any other man did, or had ever done. He said he 
beheld in him a great soldier and a great statesman — the 
greatest of each. When it was suggested that the Duke, 
on his part, saw before him a great poet and novelist, he 
smiled, and said, ' What would the Duke of Wellington think 
of a few bits of novels, which perhaps he had never read, and 
for which the strong probability is that he would not care a 
sixpence if he had ? ' You are not," (adds Ballantyne) " to 
suppose that he looked sheepish or embarrassed in the pres- 
ence of the Duke — indeed you well know that he did not, and 
could not do so ; but the feeling, qualified and modified as I 
have described it, unquestionably did exist to a certain extent. 
Its origin forms a curious moral problem ; and may probably 
be traced to a secret consciousness, which he might not himself 
advert to, that the Duke, however great as a soldier and states- 
man, was so defective in imagination as to be incapable of ap- 
preciating that which had formed the charm of his own life, as 
well as of his works." l 

1 It is proper to add to Mr. Ballantyne's solution of his "curious 
moral problem," that he was in his latter days a strenuous opponent 
of the Duke of Wellington's politics; to which circumstance he ascribes, 
in these same memoranda, the only coolness that ever occurred between 
him and Scott. I think it very probable that Scott had his own first inter- 



INCIDENTS OF HIS RETURN. 265 

Two years after this time, when Mr. Washington Irving 
visited Scott, he walked with him to a quarry, where his people 
were at work. " The face of the humblest dependent," he says, 
" brightened at his approach — all paused from their labour to 
have a pleasant ' crack wi' the laird.' Among the rest was a 
tall straight old fellow, with a healthful complexion and silver 
hairs, and a small round-crowned white hat. He had been 
about to shoulder a hod, but paused, and stood looking at Scott 
with a slight sparkling of his blue eye as if waiting his turn ; 
for the old fellow knew he was a favourite. Scott accosted 
him in an affable tone, and asked for a pinch of snuff. The 
old man drew forth a horn snuff-box. ' Hoot man/ said Scott, 
'not that old mull. Where's the bonnie French one that I 
brought you from Paris ? ' ' Troth, your honour,' replied the 
old fellow, ' sic a mull as that is nae for week-days.' On leav- 
ing the quarry, Scott informed me, that, when absent at Paris, 
he had purchased several trifling articles as presents for his 
dependents, and, among others, the gay snuff-box in question, 
which was so carefully reserved for Sundays by the veteran. 
'It was not so much the value of the gifts,' said he, 'that 
pleased them, as the idea that the laird should think of them 
when so far away.' " 

One more incident of this return — it was told to me by him- 
self, some years afterwards, with gravity, and even sadness. 
" The last of my chargers," he said, " was a high-spirited and 
very handsome one, by name Daisy, all over white, without a 
speck, and with such a mane as Pubens delighted to paint. 
He had, among other good qualities, one always particularly 
valuable in my case, that of standing like a rock to be mounted. 
When he was brought to the door, after I came home from the 
Continent, instead of signifying, by the usual tokens, that he 
was pleased to see his master, he looked askant at me like a 
devil ; and when I put my foot in the stirrup, he reared bolt 
upright, and I fell to the ground rather awkwardly. The ex- 
view with the Duke in his mind when he described the introduction of 
Roland Grseme to the Regent Murray in the Abbot : — " Such was the 
personage before whom Roland Graham now presented himself with a 
feeling of breathless awe, very different from the usual boldness and 
vivacity of his temper. In fact he was, from education and nature, much 
more easily controlled by the moral superiority arising from the elevated 
.talents and renown of those with whom he conversed, than by pretensions 
founded only on rank or external show. He might have braved with 
indifference the presence of an Earl merely distinguished by his belt and 
coronet ; but he felt overawed in that of the eminent soldier and states- 
man, the wielder of a nation's power, and the leader of her armies." 



266 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

perinient was repeated twice or thrice, always with, the same 
result. It occurred to me that he might have taken some capri- 
cious dislike to my dress ; and Tom Purdie, who always falls 
heir to the white hat and green jacket, and so forth, when Mrs. 
Scott has made me discard a set of garments, was sent for, to 
try whether these habiliments would produce him a similar 
reception from his old friend Daisy : — but Daisy allowed Tom 
to back him with all manner of gentleness. The thing was 
inexplicable — but he had certainly taken some part of my con- 
duct in high dudgeon and disgust ; and after trying him again, 
at the interval of a week, I was obliged to part with Daisy — 
and wars and rumours of wars being over, I resolved thence- 
forth to have done with such dainty blood. I now stick to a 
good sober cob." Somebody suggested, that Daisy might have 
considered himself as ill-used, by being left at home when the 
Laird went on his journey. "Ay," said he, "these creatures 
have many thoughts of their own, no doubt, that we can never 
penetrate." Then laughing, "Troth," said he, "maybe some 
bird had whispered Daisy that I had been to see the grand 
reviews at Paris on a little scrag of a Cossack, while my own 
gallant trooper was left behind bearing Peter and the post-bag 
to Melrose." 

Scott had written verse as well as prose during his travels. 
The Field of Waterloo was published before the end of 
October ; the profits of the first edition being his contribution 
to the fund raised for the relief of the widows and children of 
the soldiers slain in the battle. This piece appears to have 
disappointed those most disposed to sympathise with the 
author's views and feelings. The descent is indeed heavy 
from his Bannockburn to his Waterloo : the presence, or all 
but visible reality of what his dreams cherished, seems to have 
overawed his imagination, and tamed it into a weak pomposity 
of movement. The burst of pure native enthusiasm upon the 
Scottish heroes that fell around the Duke of Wellington's 
person, bears, however, the broadest marks of the "Mighty 
Minstrel : " 

" Saw gallant Miller's fading eye 

Still bent where Albyn's standards fly, 

And Cameron, in the shock of steel, 

Die like the offspring of Lochiel," &c. ; — 

and this is far from being the only redeeming passage. The 
poem was the first upon a subject likely to be sufficiently 
hackneyed ; and, having the advantage of coming out in a 
small cheap form — (prudently imitated from Murray's innova- 



THE FIELD OF WATERLOO. 267 

tion with, the tales of Byron, which was the deathblow to the 
system of verse in quarto) — it attained rapidly a measure of 
circulation above what had been reached either by Kokeby or 
the Lord of the Isles. 

Meanwhile the revision of Paul's Letters was proceeding; 
and Scott had almost immediately on his return concluded his 
bargain for the first edition of a third novel — The Antiquary ; 
nor was it much later that he completed rather a tedious 
negotiation with another bonnet-laird, and added the lands of 
Kaeside to Abbotsford — ■ witness the last words of a letter to 
Miss Baillie, dated Nov. 12 : — " My eldest boy is already a 
bold horseman and a fine shot, though only about fourteen 
years old. I assure you I was prouder of the first black-cock 
he killed, than I have been of anything whatever since I first 
killed one myself, and that is twenty years ago. This is all 
stupid gossip ; but, as Master Corporal Nym says, ' things 
must be as they may : ' you cannot expect grapes from thorns, 
or much amusement from a brain bewildered with thorn hedges 
at Kaeside, for such is the sonorous title of my new possession, 
in virtue of which I subscribe myself, 

Abbotsford & Kaeside." 

His pride in the young heir of Abbotsford and Kaeside was 
much gratified about this time, on occasion of a solemn football 
match more majorum, held under the auspices of the Duke of 
Buccleuch on the famous field of Carterhaugh, the scene of 
Montrose's last battle. The combatants on one side were 
picked men of the town of Selkirk, duly marshalled and led by 
their Provost ; on the other, yeomen and shepherds of the vale 
of Yarrow, at whose head marched the Duke's gay and good- 
humoured brother-in-law, Lord Home, well pleased with this 
festive mockery of old feuds, which would have been forgotten 
ages before but for the ballad so dear to the burghers, — 

' Tis up ivV the Sutors o' Selkirk, 
And His down 10V the Earl of Home. 

His Lordship's lieutenant was James Hogg, now ranked among 
the tenantry of Yarrow ; and the muster being complete — to 
quote the Edinburgh newspaper of loth December — " The 
ancient banner of the Buccleuch family, a curious and vener- 
able relique, emblazoned with armorial bearings, and Avith the 
word Bellendaine, the ancient war-cry of the clan of Scott, was 
displayed, as on former occasions when the chief took the field 



268 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

in person, whether for the purpose of war or sport. The 
banner was delivered by Lady Ann Scott to Master Walter 
Scott, younger of Abbotsford, who attended suitably mounted 
and armed, and, riding over the field, displayed it to the sound 
of the war-pipes, and amid the acclamations of the assembled 
spectators, who could not be fewer than 2000 in number. That 
this singular renewal of an ancient military custom might not 
want poetical celebrity, verses were distributed among the 
spectators, composed for the occasion by Mr. Walter Scott and 
the Ettrick Shepherd. . . . The parties parted with equal 
honours, but, before they left the ground, the Sheriff threw 
up his hat, and in Lord Dalkeith's name and his own, chal- 
lenged the Yarrow men, on the part of the Sutors, to a match 
to be played upon the first convenient opportunity." The 
newspaper then gives Scott's " Lifting of the Banner : " — 

" Then up with the Banner ! let forest winds fan her! 
She has blazed over Ettrick eight ages and more ; 
In sport we'll attend her, in battle defend her, 
With heart and with hand, like our Fathers before;" 

— and that excellent ditty by Hogg, entitled "The Ettrick 
Garland to the Ancient Banner of the House of Buccleuch : " — 

"All hail ! memorial of the brave, 

The liegemen's pride, the Border's awe! 
May thy grey pennon never wave 
On sterner field than Carterhaugh." 

I have no doubt the Sheriff of the Forest was a prouder man, 
when he saw his boy ride about Carterhaugh with the pennon 
of Bellenden, than when Platoff mounted himself for the 
imperial review of the Champ de Mars. 

Mr. Hogg in his Autobiography informs us that when the 
more distinguished part of the company assembled on the 
conclusion of the sport to dine at Bowhill, he was proceeding 
to place himself at a particular table — but the Sheriff seized 
his arm, told him that was reserved for the nobility, and seated 
him at an inferior board — " between himself and the Laird of 
Harden." "The fact is," says Hogg, "I am convinced he was 
sore afraid of my getting to be too great a favourite among the 
young ladies of Buccleuch!" Who can read this, and not be 
reminded of Sancho Panza and the Duchess ? And, after all, 
he quite mistook what Scott had said to him ; there was no 
high table for the nobility — but there was a side-table for the 
children, at which, when the Shepherd was about to seat him- 



HOGG. 269 

self, his friend probably whispered that it was reserved for 
the " little lords and ladies, and their playmates." — Hogg was 
incurable ; if it had been otherwise, he must have been cured, 
for a little time at least, by some incidents of the preceding 
winter. He then, being as usual in pecuniary straits, projected 
a work, to be called " The Poetic Mirror," in which should 
appear some piece by each popular poet of the time, the whole 
to be edited by himself, and published for his benefit ; and he 
addressed, accordingly, to his brother bards a circular petition 
for their best assistance. Scott — like Byron and most others 
— declined the proposition. His letter has not been preserved, 
but nobody can suspect that it was uncourteous. The Shep- 
herd, however, took some phrase in high dudgeon, and penned 
an answer virulently insolent in spirit and in language, ac- 
cusing him of base jealousy of his own genius. I am not sure 
whether it was on this or another occasion of the like sort, 
that James varied the usual formulas of epistolary composition, 
by beginning with " Damned Sir," and ending, " Believe me, 
Sir, yours with disgust, &c. ; " but the performance was such 
that no intercourse took place for some weeks, or perhaps 
months, afterwards. The letter in which Hogg at length 
solicits a renewal of kindliness, says nothing, it may be 
observed, of the circumstance which, according to his Auto- 
biography, had caused him to repent of his suspicions. The 
fact was, that hearing, shortly after the receipt of the offensive 
epistle, that the Shepherd was confined to his lodgings, in an 
obscure alley of Edinburgh, by a dangerous illness, Scott 
called on a kind friend and protector of his, Mr. John Grieve 
(a hatter on the North Bridge), to make inquiries about him, 
and to offer to take on himself the expenses of the best medical 
attendance. He had, however, cautioned the worthy hatter 
that no hint of this offer must reach Hogg ; and in consequence, 
it might perhaps be the Shepherd's feeling at the time that 
he should not, in addressing his life-long benefactor, betray 
any acquaintance with this recent interference on his behalf. 
There can be no doubt, however, that he obeyed the genuine 
dictates of his better nature when he penned this apologetic 
eff asion : — 

" Gabriel's Boad, February 28, 1815. 

" Mr. Scott, — I think it is great nonsense for two men who 
are friends at heart, and who ever must be so — indeed it is 
not in the nature of things that they can be otherwise — should 
be professed enemies. 

" Mr. Grieve and Mr. Laidlaw, who were very severe on me, 



270 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

and to whom I was obliged to show your letter, have long ago 
convinced me that I mistook part of it, and that it was not me 
yon held in such contempt, but the opinion of the public. The 
idea that you might mean that (though I still think the reading 
will bear either construction) has given me much pain ; for I 
know I answered yours intemperately, and in a mortal rage. 
I meant to have enclosed yours, and begged of you to return 
mine, but I cannot find it, and am sure that some one to whom 
I have been induced to show it, has taken it away. How- 
ever, as my troubles on that subject were never like to wear 
to an end, I could not longer resist telling you that I am ex- 
tremely vexed about it. I desire not a renewal of our former 
intimacy, for haply, after what I have written, your family 
would not suffer it ; but I wish it to be understood that, when 
we meet by chance, we might shake hands, and speak to one 
another as old acquaintances, and likewise that we may ex- 
change a letter occasionally, for I find there are many things 
which I yearn to communicate to you, and the tears rush to 
my eyes when I consider that I may not. If you allow of this, 
pray let me know, and if you do not, let me know. Indeed, I 
am anxious to hear from you, for l as the day of trouble is with 
me, so shall my strength be.' To be friends from the teeth for- 
wards is common enough ; but it strikes me that there is some- 
thing still more ludicrous in the reverse of the picture, and so 
to be enemies — and why should I be, from the teeth forwards, 
yours sincerely, James Hogg?" 

Scott's reply was, as Hogg says, " a brief note, telling him 
to think no more of the business, and come to breakfast next 
morning." 

The year 1815 may be considered as, for Scott's peaceful 
tenor of life, an eventful one. That which followed has left 
almost its only traces in the successive appearance of nine 
volumes, which attest the prodigal genius and hardly less as- 
tonishing industry of the man. Early in January were pub- 
lished Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, of which I need not now 
say more than that they were received with lively curiosity, 
and general, though not vociferous applause. The first edition 
was an octavo of 6000 copies ; and it was followed in the course 
of the next two or three years by a second and a third, amount- 
ing together to 3000 more. The popularity of the novelist was 
at its height ; and this admitted, if not avowed, specimen of 
Scott's prose, must have been perceived by all who had any 
share of discrimination, to flow from the same pen. 



THE ANTIQUABY. 271 

Mr. Terry produced, in the spring of 1816, a dramatic piece 
entitled " Guy Mannering," which met with great success on 
the London boards, and still continues to be a favourite with 
the theatrical public. What share the novelist himself had in 
this first specimen of what he used to call the " art of Terry fy- 
ing" I cannot exactly say ; but his correspondence shews that 
the pretty song of the Lullaby was not his only contribution to 
it ; and I infer that he had taken the trouble to modify the 
plot, and rearrange, for stage purposes, a considerable part of 
the original dialogue. 

Early in May appeared the novel of The Antiquary, which 
seems to have been begun a little before the close of 1815. It 
came out at a moment of domestic distress. His brother Major 
John Scott, whose health had long been feeble, died on the 8th 
of May. The Major, from all I have heard, was a sober, sedate 
bachelor, of dull mind and frugal tastes, who, after his retire- 
ment from the army, divided his time between his mother's 
primitive fireside, and the society of a few whist-playing brother 
officers, that met for an evening rubber at Fortune's tavern. 
He left some L.6000 to be divided between his two surviving 
brothers ; and Walter thus writes on the occasion to his friend 
at Rokeby : " Though we were always on fraternal terms of 
mutual kindness and good-will, yet our habits of life, our tastes 
for society and circles of friends, were so totally different, that 
there was less frequent intercourse between us than our con- 
nexion and real liking to each other might have occasioned. 
Yet it is a heavy consideration to have lost the last but one 
who was interested in our early domestic life, our habits of 
boyhood, and our first friends and connexions. It makes one 
look about and see how the scene has changed around him, 
and how he himself has been changed with it. My only re- 
maining brother is in Canada, and seems to have an intention 
of remaining there ; so that my mother, now upwards of eighty, 
has now only one child left to her out of thirteen whom she 
has borne. She is a most excellent woman, possessed, even at 
her advanced age, of all the force of mind and sense of duty 
which have carried her through so many domestic griefs, as 
the successive deaths of eleven children, some of them come 
to men and women's estate, naturally infers. She is the prin- 
cipal subject of my attention at present, and is, I am glad to 
say, perfectly well in body and composed in mind. ... I sent 
you, some time since, The Antiquary. It is not so interesting 
as its predecessors — the period did not admit of so much 
romantic situation. But it has been more fortunate than any 



272 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

of tliem in the sale, for 6000 went off in the first six days, and 
it is now at press again ; which is very flattering to the un- 
known author." In a letter of the same date to Terry, Scott 
says — " It wants the romance of Waverley and the adventure 
of Guy Mannering ; and yet there is some salvation about it, 
for if a man will paint from nature, he will be likely to amuse 
those who are daily looking at it." 

After a little pause of hesitation, it attained popularity not 
inferior to Guy Mannering; and though the author appears 
for a moment to have shared the doubts which he read in the 
countenance of James Ballantyne, it certainly was, in the sequel, 
his chief favourite among all his novels. ISTor is it difficult to 
account for this preference, without laying any stress on the 
fact that, during a few short weeks, it was pretty commonly 
talked of as a falling off from its immediate predecessors — 
and that some minor critics re-echoed this in print. In that 
view, there were many of its successors that had stronger 
claims on the parental instinct of protection. But the truth 
is, that although Scott's Introduction of 1830 represents him 
as pleased with fancying that, in the principal personage, he 
had embalmed a worthy friend of his boyish days, his own 
antiquarian propensities, originating perhaps in the kind atten- 
tions of George Constable of Wallace-Craigie, and fostered not 
a little, at about as ductile a period, by those of old Clerk 
of Eldin, and John B-amsay of Ochtertyre, had by degrees so 
developed themselves, that he could hardly, even when The 
Antiquary was published, have scrupled about recognising a 
quaint caricature of the founder of Abbotsford Museum, in 
the inimitable portraiture of the Laird of Monkbarns. The 
Descriptive Catalogue of that collection which he began tow- 
ards the close of his life, but, alas ! never finished, is entitled 
" Beli 'qui 'ce Trottcosiance — or the Gabions of the late Jonathan 
Oldbuck, Esq." But laying this, which might have been little 
more than a good-humoured pleasantry, out of the question, 
there is assuredly no one of all his works on which more of 
his own early associations have left their image. Of those 
early associations, as his full-grown tastes were all the prog- 
eny, so his genius, in all its happiest efforts, was the " Record- 
ing Angel ; " and when George Constable first expounded his 
" Gabions " to the child that was to immortalise his name, 
they were either wandering hand in hand over the field where 
the grass still grew rank upon the grave of Bahnaichapple, or 
sauntering on the beach where the MucMebackets of Preston- 
pans dried their nets, singing 



THE ANTIQUARY. 273 

" Weel may the boatie row, and better may she speed, 
weel may the boatie row that wins the bairns' bread " — 

or telling wild stories about cliff-escapes and the funerals of 
shipwrecked fishermen. 

Considered by itself, this novel seems to me to possess, 
almost throughout, in common with its two predecessors, a 
kind of simple unsought charm, which the subsequent works 
of the series hardly reached, save in occasional snatches : — 
like them it is, in all its humbler and softer scenes, the tran- 
script of actual Scottish life, as observed by the man himself. 

And I think it must also be allowed that he has nowhere 
displayed his highest art, that of skilful contrast, in greater 
perfection. Even the tragic romance of Waverley does not set 
off its MacWheebles and Callum Begs better than the oddities 
of Jonathan Oldbuck and his circle are relieved, on the one 
hand by the stately gloom of the Glenallens, on the other by 
the stern affliction of the poor fisherman, who, when discovered 
repairing the " aulcl black bitch o' a boat " in which his boy 
had been lost, and congratulated by his visitor on being capable 
of the exertion, makes answer — " And what would you have 
me to do, unless I wanted to see four children starve, because 
one is drowned? It's weel wi J you gentles, that can sit in the 
house ivf handkerchers at your een, when ye lose a friend; but 
the like o' us maun to our ivark again, if our hearts ivere beating 
as hard as my hammer" 

It may be worth noting, that it was in correcting the proof- 
sheets of this novel that Scott first took to equipping his chap- 
ters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he 
happened to ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to 
hunt for a particular passage in Beaumont and Fletcher. John 
did as he was bid, but did not succeed in discovering the lines. 
"Hang it, Johnnie," cried Scott, "I believe I can make a 
motto sooner than you will find one." He did so accordingly ; 
and from that hour, whenever memory failed to suggest an ap- 
propriate epigraph, he had recourse to the inexhaustible mines 
of " old play " or " old ballad," to which we owe some of the 
most exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen. 

Unlike, I believe, most men, whenever Scott neared the end 
of one composition, his spirit seems to have caught a new 
spring of buoyancy, and before the last sheet was sent from 
his desk, he had crowded his brain with the imagination of 
another fiction. The Antiquary was published, as we have 
seen, in May, but by the beginning of April he had already 



274 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

opened to the Ballantynes the plan of the first Tales of my 
Landlord; and — to say nothing of Harold the Dauntless, 
which he began shortly after the Bridal of Triermain was fin- 
ished, and which he seems to have kept before him for two 
years as a congenial plaything, to be taken up whenever the 
coach brought no proof-sheets to jog him as to serious matters 

— he had also, before this time, undertaken to write the his- 
torical department of the Register for 1814. He had not yet 
collected the materials requisite for his historical sketch of a 
year distinguished for the importance and complexity of its 
events ; but these, he doubted not, would soon reach him, and 
he felt no hesitation about pledging himself to complete, not 
only that sketch, but four new volumes of prose romances — 
and his Harold the Dauntless also, if Ballantyne could make 
any suitable arrangement on that score — between the April 
and the Christmas of 1816. 

The Antiquary had been published by Constable, but I pre- 
sume that, in addition to the usual stipulations, he had been 
again, on that occasion, solicited to relieve John Ballantyne's 
stock to an extent which he did not find quite convenient ; and 
at all events he had of late shewn a considerable reluctance to 
employ James Ballantyne and Co. as printers. One or other 
of these impediments is alluded to in this queer note of Scott's : 

— " Dear John, — I have seen the great swab, who is supple as 
a glove, and will do all, which some interpret nothing. How- 
ever, we shall do well enough. W. S." " The great swab " 
had been admitted, almost from the beginning, into the secret 
of the Novels — and for that, among other reasons, it would 
have been desirable for the Novelist to have him continue the 
publisher without interruption ; but Scott was led to suspect, 
that if he were called upon to conclude a bargain for a fourth 
novel before the third had made its appearance, his scruples as 
to the matter of printing might at least protract the treaty ; 
and why Scott should have been urgently desirous of seeing 
the transaction settled at once, is sufficiently explained by the 
fact, that though so much of Mr. John's old unfortunate stock 
still remained on hand — - and with it some occasional recur- 
rence of difficulty as to floating-bills must be expected — while 
Mr. James Ballantyne's management of pecuniary affairs had 
not been very careful 1 — nevertheless, the sanguine author had 
gone on purchasing one patch of land after another, until his 

1 In February 1816, when James Ballant3'ne married, it appears from 
letters in his handwriting that he owed to Scott more than L.3000 of 
personal debt. 



BUSINESS DIFFICULTIES. 275 

estate had already grown from 150 to nearly 1000 acres. The 
property all about his original farm had been in the hands of 
small holders (Scottice, cock-lairds) ; these were sharp enough 
to understand that their neighbour could with difficulty resist 
any temptation that might present itself in the shape of acres ; 
and thus he proceeded buying up lot after lot of unimproved 
ground, at extravagant prices, — his "appetite increasing by 
what it fed on;" while the ejected yeomen set themselves 
down elsewhere, to fatten at their leisure upon the profits — 
most commonly the anticipated profits — of "The Scotch 
Novels." 

He was ever and anon pulled up with a momentary misgiv- 
ing, — and resolved that the latest acquisition should be the 
last, until he could get rid entirely of " John Ballantyne & 
Co." But, after the first and more serious embarrassments 
had been overcome, John was far from continuing to hold by 
his patron's anxiety for the total abolition of their unhappy 
copartnership. He, unless when some sudden emergency 
arose, nattered Scott's own gay imagination, by representing 
everything in the most smiling colours ; and though Scott, in 
his replies, seldom failed to introduce some hint of caution — 
such as " Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia" — he more and 
more took home to himself the agreeable cast of his Rigdum's 
anticipations, and wrote to him in a vein as merry as his own 
— e.g. — " As for our stock, 

" 'Twill be wearing awa', John, 
Like snaw-wreaths when it's thaw, John," &c. &c. &c. 

John could never have forgotten that it was to Constable 
alone that his firm had more than once owed its escape from 
dishonour ; and he must have known that, after the triumphant 
career of the Waverley series had once commenced, nothing 
could have been more easy than to bring all the affairs of " back- 
stock, &c," to a close, by entering into a distinct and candid 
treaty on that subject, in connexion with the future works of 
the great Novelist, either with Constable or with any other 
first-rate house in the trade : but he also knew that, were that 
unhappy firm wholly extinguished, he must himself subside 
into a clerk of the printing company. Therefore, in a word, he 
appears to have systematically disguised from Scott the extent 
to which the whole Ballantyne concern had been sustained by 
Constable — especially during his Hebridean tour of 1814, and 
his Continental one of 1815 — and prompted and enforced the 



276 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

idea of trying other booksellers from time to time, instead of 
adhering to Constable, merely for the selfish purposes, — first, 
of facilitating the immediate discount of bills ; — secondly, of 
further perplexing Scott's affairs, the entire disentanglement of 
Avhich would have been, as he fancied, prejudicial to his own 
personal importance. * 

It was resolved, accordingly, to offer the risk and half profits 
of the first edition of another new novel — or rather collection 
of novels — to Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street, and Mr. Black- 
wood, who was then Murray's agent in Scotland ; but it was at 
the same time resolved, partly because Scott wished to try an- 
other experiment on the public sagacity, but partly also, no 
question, from the wish to spare Constable's feelings, that the 
title-page of the Tales of my Landlord should not bear the 
magical words " by the Author of Waverley." The facility with 
which both Murray and Blackwood embraced such a proposal, 
as no untried novelist, being sane, could have dreamt of hazard- 
ing, shews that neither of them had any doubt as to the iden- 
tity of the author. They both considered the withholding of 
the avowal on the forthcoming title-page as likely to check very 
much the first success of the book ; but they were both eager 
to prevent Constable's acquiring a sort of prescriptive right to 
publish for the unrivalled novelist, and agreed to all the terms, 
including a considerable burden of the endless "back-stock." 

Scott's intention originally was to give in the four volumes 
as many tales, each having its scene laid in a different province 
of Scotland ; but this scheme was soon abandoned : and the 
series included only the two stories of the Black Dwarf and 
Old Mortality. When the former had been printed off, Murray 
shewed it to Gifford, who expressed some disapprobation : and 
Blackwood, on hearing what the Quarterly critic thought, vent- 
ured to write to James Ballantyne, intimating his own appre- 
hension likewise, that the Dwarf would be considered as hardly 
worthy of the author : he said that the groundwork was excel- 
lent, but that the execution had been too rapid — that the con- 
clusion seemed to him very disappointing: and that if the 
author would recast the latter chapters, he (Mr. Blackwood) 
would gladly take on himself the expense of cancelling the 
sheets. Scott, on receiving this communication, wrote to Bal- 
lantyne in terms of violent indignation, of which Blackwood 
had the sternest share apparently, but which I doubt not was 
chiefly stirred against the " coadjutor " referred to in the new 
publisher's epistle. "Tell him and his coadjutor," said he, 
" that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither 



TALES OF MY LANDLORD. 277 

give nor receive quarter. I'll be cursed but this is the most 
impudent proposal that ever was made." Ballantyne trans- 
lated this into courtly phrase for the eye of the parties — but 
Scott heard no more of preliminary criticism. 

On the first of December, the Tales appeared, and notwith- 
standing the silence of the title-page, the change of publishers, 
and the attempt which had certainly been made to vary the 
style both of delineation and of language, all doubts whether 
they were or were not from the same hand with Waverley had 
worn themselves out before the lapse of a week. On the 14th, 
the London publisher was unable to suppress his exultation, and 
addressed to Scott himself a letter concluding in these words : 
— " Heber says there are only two men in the world — Walter 
Scott and Lord Byron. Between you, you have given exist- 
ence to a third — ever your faithful servant, John Murray." 
To this cordial effusion, Scott returned a dexterous answer. It 
was necessary, since he had resolved against compromising his 
incognito, that he should be prepared not only to repel the 
impertinent curiosity of strangers, but to evade the proffered 
congratulations of overflowing kindness. He contrived, how- 
ever, to do so, on this and all similar occasions, in a style of 
equivoque which could never be seriously misunderstood. He 
says to Murray: — "I give you heartily joy of the success of 
the Tales, although I do not claim that paternal interest in 
them which my friends do me the credit to assign me. I as- 
sure you I have never read a volume of them until they were 
printed, and can only join with the rest of the world in applaud- 
ing the true and striking portraits which they present of old 
Scottish manners. I do not expect implicit reliance to be 
placed on my disavowal, because I know very well that he who 
is disposed not to own a work must necessarily deny it, and that 
otherwise his secret would be at the mercy of all who choose to 
ask the question, since silence in such a case must always pass 
for consent, or rather assent. But I have a mode of convinc- 
ing you that I am perfectly serious in my denial — pretty simi- 
lar to that by which Solomon distinguished the fictitious from 
the real mother — and that is, by reviewing the work, which I 
take to be an operation equal to that of quartering the child. 
But this is only on condition I can have Mr. Erskine's assist- 
ance, who admires the work greatly more than I do, though I 
think the painting of the second Tale both true and powerful. 
The first Tale is not very original in its concoction, and lame 
and impotent in its conclusion." 

Murray, gladly embracing this offer of an article for his 



278 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

journal on the Tales of my Landlord, begged Scott to take a 
wider scope, and dropping all respect for the idea of a divided 
parentage, to place together any materials he might have for 
the illustration of the Scotch Novels in general. What Scott's 
original conception had been I know not ; but the able biog- 
rapher of John Knox, Dr. M'Crie, had, in the meantime, con- 
sidered the representation of the Covenanters, in the story of 
Old Mortality, as so unfair as to demand at his hands a very 
serious rebuke. The Doctor forthwith published, in a religious 
magazine, a set of papers, in which the historical foundations 
of that tale were attacked with indignant warmth ; and Scott 
found the impression they were producing so strong, that he 
finally devoted a very large part of his article for the Quarterly 
to an elaborate defence of his own picture of the Covenanters. 1 
The answer to Dr. M-'Crie, and the Introduction of 1830, 
have exhausted the historical materials on which he constructed 
his Old Mortality ; and the origin of the Black Dwarf — as to 
the conclusion of which story he appears on reflexion to have 
adopted the opinion of honest Blackwood — has already been 
mentioned in an anecdote of his early wanderings. The latter 
Tale, however imperfect, and unworthy as a work of art to be 

1 Since I have mentioned this reviewal, I may express here my convic- 
tion, that Erskine, not Scott, was the author of the critical estimate of the 
AVaverley novels which it embraces — although for the purpose of mystifi- 
cation Scott had taken the trouble to transcribe the paragraphs in which 
that estimate is contained. At the same time I cannot but add that, had 
Scott really been the sole author of the article, he need not have incurred 
the severe censure which has been applied to his supposed conduct in the 
matter. After all, his judgment of his own works must have been allowed 
to be not above, but very far under the mark : and the whole affair would, 
I think, have been considered by every candid person exactly as the letter 
about Solomon and the rival mothers was by Murray, Gifford, and " the 
four o'clock visitors" of Albemarle Street — as a good joke. A better 
joke, certainly, than the allusion to the report of Thomas Scott being the 
author of Waverley, at the close of the paper, was never penned; and I 
think it includes a confession over which a misanthrope might have 
chuckled : — " We intended here to conclude this long article, when a 
strong report reached us of certain Transatlantic confessions, which, if 
genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a different author to 
these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. 
Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, 
on the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse, in a letter to the Earl 
of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who 
used to hold forth at conventicles : ' I sent for the webster (weaver), they 
brought in his brother for him ; though he, may be, cannot preach like his 
brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he, wherefore I 
thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go to jail 
with the rest ! ' " — Miscell. Prose, xix. p. 85. 



TALES OF MY LANDLORD. 279 

placed high in the catalogue of his productions, derives a 
singular interest from its delineation of the dark feelings so 
often connected with physical deformity ; feelings which appear 
to have diffused their shadow over the whole genius of Byron 
— and which, but for this single picture, we should hardly have 
conceived ever to have passed through Scott's happier mind. 
All the bitter blasphemy of spirit which, from infancy to the 
tomb, swelled up in Byron against the unkindness of nature ; 
which sometimes perverted even his filial love into a sentiment 
of diabolical malignity ; all this black and desolate train of 
reflexions must have been encountered and deliberately sub- 
dued by the manly parent of the Black Dwarf — Old Mortality, 
on the other hand, is remarkable as the novelist's first attempt 
to repeople the past by the power of imagination working on 
materials furnished by books. In Waverley he revived the 
fervid dreams of his boyhood, and drew, not from printed 
records, but from the artless oral narratives of his Invemahyles. 
In Guy Mannering and the Antiquary he embodied characters 
and manners familiar to his own wandering youth. But when- 
ever his letters mention Old Mortality in its progress, they 
represent him as strong in "the confidence that the industry 
with which he had pored over a library of forgotten tracts 
would enable him to identify himself with the time in which 
they had birth, as completely as if he had listened with his 
own ears to the dismal sermons of Peden, ridden with Clav- 
erhouse and Dalzell in the rout of Bothwell, and been an 
advocate at the bar of the Privy Council when Lauderdale 
catechised and tortured the assassins of Archbishop Sharpe. 
To reproduce a departed age with such minute and life-like 
accuracy as this tale exhibits, demanded a far more energetic 
sympathy of imagination than had been called for in any effort 
of his serious verse. It is indeed most curiously instructive 
for any student of art to compare the Roundheads of Eokeby 
with the Bluebonnets of Old Mortality. For the rest — the 
story is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding 
novels ; the canvas is a broader one ; the characters are con- 
trasted and projected with a power and felicity which neither 
he nor any other master ever surpassed ; and notwithstanding 
all that has been urged against him as a disparager of the 
Covenanters, it is to me very doubtful whether the inspiration 
of romantic chivalry ever prompted him to nobler emotions 
than he has lavished on the reanimation of their stern and 
solemn enthusiasm. This work has always appeared to me 
the Marmion of his novels. 



280 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

I have disclaimed the power of farther illustrating its histor- 
ical groundworks, but I am enabled by Mr. Train's kindness 
to give some interesting additions to Scott's own account of 
this novel as a composition. The generous Supervisor visited 
him in Edinburgh in May 1816, a few days after the publica- 
tion of the Antiquary, carrying with him a purse that had 
belonged to Rob Roy, and also a fresh heap of traditionary 
gleanings — among others some story by a Mr. Broadfoot, 
"schoolmaster at the clachan of Penningham." Broadfoot 
had facetiously signed his communication Clashbottom, — " a 
professional appellation derived," says Mr. Train, "from the 
use of the birch, and by which he was usually addressed 
among his companions, — who assembled, not at the Wallace 
Inn of Gandercleuch, but at the sign of the Shoulder of Mut- 
ton in Newton-Stewart." Scott (who already possessed Eob 
Roy's gun) received these gifts with benignity, and invited the 
friendly donor to breakfast next morning. He found him at 
work in his library, and surveyed with enthusiastic curiosity 
the furniture of the room, especially its only picture, a portrait 
of Graham of Claverhouse. Train expressed the surprise with 
which every one who had known Dundee only in the pages of 
the Presbyterian Annalists, must see for the first time that 
beautiful and melancholy visage, worthy of the most pathetic 
dreams of romance. Scott replied, " that no character had been 
so foully traduced as the Viscount of Dundee — that, thanks 
to Wodrow, Cruickshanks, and such chroniclers, he, who was 
every inch a soldier and a gentleman, still passed among the 
Scottish vulgar for a ruffian desperado, who rode a goblin 
horse, was proof against shot, and in league with the Devil." 
"Might he not," said Mr. Train, "be made, in good hands, 
the hero of a national romance as interesting as any about 
either Wallace or Prince Charlie ? " " He might," said Scott, 
" but your western zealots would require to be faithfully por- 
trayed in order to bring him out with the right effect." " And 
what," resumed Train, " if the story were to be delivered as if 
from the mouth of Old Mortality? Would he not do as well 
as the Minstrel did in the Lay ? " I think it certain that to 
this interview with Train we owe the framework of the Gan- 
dercleuch Series, as well as the adoption of Claverhouse's 
period for one of its first fictions. It seems also probable that 
we owe a further obligation to the Supervisor's presentation 
of Eob Roy's spleuchan. 

Within less than a month, the Black Dwarf and Old Mortal- 
ity were followed by " Harold the Dauntless, by the author of 



HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS. 281 

the Bridal of Trierniain." This poem had been, it appears, 
begun several years back ; nay, part of it had been actually 
printed before the appearance of Childe Harold, though that 
circumstance had escaped the author's remembrance when he 
penned, in 1830, his Introduction to the Lord of the Isles ; for 
he there says, " I am still astonished at my having committed 
the gross error of selecting the very name which Lord Byron 
had made so famous." The volume was published by Messrs. 
Constable, and had, in those booksellers' phrase, " considerable 
success." It has never, however, been placed on a level with 
Trierniain; and though it contains many vigorous pictures, 
and splendid verses, and here and there some happy humour, 
the confusion and harsh transitions of the fable, and the dim 
rudeness of character and manners, seem sufficient to account 
for this inferiority in public favour. It is not surprising that 
the author should have redoubled his aversion to the notion 
of any more serious performances in verse. He had seized 
on an instrument of wider compass, and which, handled with 
whatever rapidity, seemed to reveal at every touch treasures 
that had hitherto slept unconsciously within him. He had 
thrown off his fetters, and might well go forth rejoicing in 
the native elasticity of his strength. 

It is at least a curious coincidence in literary history, that 
as Cervantes, driven from the stage of Madrid by the success 
of Lope de Vega, threw himself into prose romance, and pro- 
duced, at the moment when the world considered him as 
silenced for ever, the Don Quixote which has outlived Lope's 
two thousand triumphant dramas — so Scott, abandoning verse 
to Byron, should have rebounded from his fall by the only 
prose romances, which seem to be classed with the masterpiece 
of Spanish genius, by the general judgment of Europe. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

Serious illness — Laidlaw settled at Kaeside and the Fergussons at Hunt- 
ley Burn — New House begun — Washington Irving — Publication of 
Rob Roy — and the Heart of Mid-Lothian — Scott in Edinburgh. 
1817-1818. 

Not to disturb the narrative of his literary proceedings, I 
have deferred until now the mention of an attempt which 
Scott made during the winter of 1816-1817, to exchange his 
seat at the Clerk's table for one on the Bench of the Scotch 
Court of Exchequer. It had often occurred to me, in the 
most prosperous years of his life, that such a situation would 
have suited him better in every respect than that which he 
held, and that his never attaining a promotion, which the 
Scottish public would have considered so naturally due to his 
character and services, reflected little honour on his political 
allies. But at the period when I was entitled to hint this to 
him, he appeared to have made up his mind that the rank of 
Clerk of Session was more compatible than that of a Supreme 
Judge with the habits of a literary man, who was perpetually 
publishing, and whose writings were generally of the imagina- 
tive order. I had also witnessed the zeal with which he sec- 
onded the views of more than one of his own friends, when 
their ambition was directed to the Exchequer Bench. I re- 
mained, in short, ignorant that he ever had seriously thought 
of it for himself, until the ruin of his worldly fortunes in 
1826; nor had I any information that his wish to obtain it 
had ever been distinctly stated, until his letters to the late 
Duke of Buccleuch were placed in my hands after his death. 
The Duke's answers shew the warmest anxiety to serve Scott, 
but refer to private matters, which rendered it inconsistent 
with his Grace's feelings to interfere at the time with the 
distribution of Crown patronage. I incline to think, on the 
whole, that the death of this nobleman, which soon after left 
the influence of his house in abeyance, must have, far more 
than any other circumstance, determined Scott to renounce all 
notions of altering his professional position. 

Early in 1817, he was visited, for the first time since his 

282 



SERIOUS ILLNESS. 283 

childish, years, with a painful illness, which proved the har- 
binger of a series of attacks, all nearly of the same kind, 
continued at short intervals during more than two years. 
The reader has been told already how widely his habits of 
life when in Edinburgh differed from those of Abbotsford. 
They at all times did so to a great extent ; but he had pushed 
his liberties with a most robust constitution to a perilous ex- 
treme while the affairs of the Ballantynes were labouring. 
" I had," he writes to Morritt (12th March) " been plagued 
all through this winter with cramps in my stomach, which I 
endured as a man of mould might, and endeavoured to com- 
bat them by drinking scalding water, and so forth. As they 
grew rather unpleasantly frequent, I had reluctant recourse to 
Bail lie. But before his answer arrived, on the 5th, I had a 
most violent attack, which broke up a small party at my 
house, and sent me to bed roaring like a bull-calf. All sorts 
of remedies were applied, as in the case of Gil Bias' pretended 
colic, but such was the pain of the real disorder that it out- 
deviled the Doctor hollow. Even heated salt, which was 
applied in such a state that it burned my shirt to rags, I 
hardly felt when clapped to my stomach. At length the 
symptoms became inflammatory, and dangerously so, the seat 
being the diaphragm. They only gave way to very profuse 
bleeding and blistering, which, under higher assistance, saved 
my life. My recovery was slow and tedious from the state 
of exhaustion. I could neither stir for weakness and giddi- 
ness, nor read for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen for a whiz- 
zing sound in my ears, nor even think for lack of the power 
of arranging my ideas. So I had a comfortless time of it for 
about a week. Even yet I by no means feel, as the copy-book 
hath it, 

' The lion bold, which the lamb doth hold — ' 

on the contrary, I am as weak as water. They tell me (of 
course) I must renounce every creature comfort, as my friend 
Jedediah calls it. As for dinner and so forth, I care little 
about it — but toast and water, and three glasses of wine, 
sound like hard laws to me. However, to parody the lamenta- 
tion of Hassan, the camel-driver, 

' The lily health outvies the grape's bright ray 
And life is dearer than the usquebae.' " 

The scene of the 5th Avas more than once repeated. His 
friends in Edinburgh continued all that spring in great anx- 



28 J: LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

iety on his account. Scarcely, however, had the first symp- 
toms yielded to severe medical treatment, than he is found 
to have beguiled the intervals of his suffering by planning a 
drama on a story supplied to him by one of Train's communi- 
cations, which he desired to present to Terry, on behalf of 
the actor's first-born son, who had been christened by the 
name of AY alter Scott Terry. 1 Such was the origin of " The 
Fortunes of Devorgoil " — a piece which, though completed 
soon afterwards, and submitted by Terry to many manipula- 
tions with a view to the stage, was never received by any 
manager, and was first published, towards the close of the 
author's life, under the title, slightly altered for an obvious 
reason, of " The Doom of Devorgoil." 

On the 29th of March John Philip Kemble, after going 
through the round of his chief parts, to the delight of the 
Edinburgh audience, took his final leave of them as Macbeth, 
and in the costume of that character delivered a farewell 
address, penned for him by Scott. No one who witnessed 
that scene, and heard the lines as then recited, can ever expect 
to be again interested to the same extent by anything occur- 
ring within the walls of a theatre ; nor was I ever present at 
any public dinner in all its circumstances more impressive 
than that which occurred a few days afterwards, when Kem- 
ble's Scotch friends and admirers assembled around him — 
Francis Jeffrey being chairman, Walter Scott and John Wilson 
the croupiers. 

His letters to Terry about this time prove sufficiently that, 
whatever pain he endured, he had no serious apprehensions 
as to his health; for a principal theme is the plan of found- 
ing a new house at Abbotsford ; and by and by the details of 
that project wholly engross the correspondence. The founda- 
tion was in part laid early in the ensuing summer : an unfortu- 
nate feature in Scott's history; for he was by degrees tempted 
to extend his design, and the ultimate expense very greatly 
exceeded all his and his friends' calculations. 

Shortly before this time, Mr. William Laidlaw had met with 
misfortunes, which rendered it necessary for him to give up 
his farm. He was now anxiously looking about him for some 
new establishment, and Scott invited him to occupy a house 
on his property, and endeavour, under his guidance, to make 
such literary exertions as might improve his income. The 
prospect of obtaining such a neighbour was, no doubt, the 

1 Mr. W. S. Terry lived to distinguish himself as an officer in the East 
India army : and fell in action against the Affghans. 



LAIDLAW AT KAESIDE. 285 

more welcome to " Abbotsford and Kaeside," from its opening 
at this period of fluctuating health. ; and Laidlaw, who had 
for twenty years loved and revered him, considered the pro- 
posal with far greater delight than the most lucrative appoint- 
ment on any noble domain in the island could have afforded 
him. Though possessed of a lively and searching sagacity 
as to things in general, he had always been as to his own 
worldly interests simple as a child. His tastes and habits 
were all modest ; and when he looked forward to spending 
the remainder of what had not hitherto been a successful 
life, under the shadow of the genius that he had worshipped 
almost from boyhood, his gentle heart was all happiness. He 
surveyed with glistening eyes the humble cottage in which 
his friend proposed to lodge him, his wife, and his little ones, 
and said to himself that he should write no more sad songs 
on Forest Flittings. 1 

He soon procured a little employment from Mr. Blackwood, 
who was then starting his Magazine ; and Scott being at the 
moment too unwell to write himself, dictated to and for him 
the anecdotes of gypsies which appeared in Blackwood's open- 
ing Number, and have since been placed among the appendages 
of Guy Mannering. By and by, when the Laird had made 
other additions to his territory, and especially to his wood- 
lands, Laidlaw's active watchfulness over the habits and com- 
forts of the cottars employed well entitled him to a regular 
salary as factor. Meantime occasional literary jobs both 
amused and helped him ; and any deficiency of funds was 
no doubt supplied in the way that may be guessed from Scott's 
delicate and thoughtful notes and letters to his most amiable 
friend : for example, this of November 1817 : — " Dear Willie, 
— I hope you will not quarrel with my last. Believe me that, 
to a sound judging and philosophical mind, this same account of 
Dr. and Or. which fills up so much time in the world, is com- 
paratively of very small value. When you get rich, unless I 
thrive in the same proportion, I will request your assistance 
for less, for little, or for nothing, as the case may require ; but 
while I wear my seven-leagued boots to stride in triumph over 
moss and muir, it would be very silly in either of us to let a 
cheque twice a year of L.25 make a difference between us. But 

1 Laidlaw's song of "Lucy's Flitting " — a simple and pathetic picture 
of a poor Ettrick maiden's feelings in leaving a service where she had 
been happy — must ever be a favourite with ail who understand the deli- 
cacies of the Scottish dialect, and the manners of the district in which 
the scene is laid. 



286 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

all this we will talk over when we meet. I meditate one day 
a coup-de-ma it re, which will make my friend's advice and exer- 
tion essential — indeed worthy of much better remuneration." 

Neither the recurring fits of cramp, nor anything else, could, as 
yet, interrupt Scott's litera^ industry. Before Whitsuntide he 
had made his bargain for another novel. This was at once ten- 
dered to Constable, who was delighted to interrupt in his turn 
the connexion with Murray and Blackwood, and readily agreed 
to meet John Ballantyne at Abbotsf ord, where all was speedily 
settled. 

As to Bob Boy, the title was suggested by Constable, and 
he told me years afterwards the difficulty he had to get it 
adopted by the author. " What ! " said he, " Mr. Accoucheur, 
must you be setting up for Mr. Sponsor too? — but let's hear 
it." Constable said the name of the real hero would be the 
best possible name for the book. "Xay," answered Scott, 
" never let me have to write up to a name. You well know 
I have generally adopted a title that told nothing." — The 
bookseller, however, persevered; and after the trio had dined, 
these scruples gave way. 

On rising from table, according to Constable, they sallied out 
to the green before the door of the cottage, and all in the high- 
est spirits enjoyed the fine May evening. John Ballantyne, 
hopping up and down in his glee, exclaimed, "Is Bob's gun 
here, Mr. Scott ; would you object to my trying the auld barrel 
with a few dejoy?" — " Nay, Mr. Puff," said Scott, " it would 
burst, and blow you to the devil before your time." — " Johnny, 
my man," said Constable, "what the mischief puts drawing 
at sight into your head?" Scott laughed heartily at this 
innuendo ; and then observing that the little man felt some- 
what sore, called attention to the notes of a bird in the adjoin- 
ing shrubbery. " And by the by," said he, as they continued 
listening, " 'tis a long time, Johnny, since we have had the 
Cobbler of Kelso." Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass 
of stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one 
working with his awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking 
a certain son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often 
lingered when they were schoolboys, and a blackbird, the only 
companion of his cell, that used to sing to him, while he talked 
and whistled to it all day long. With this performance Scott 
was always delighted : nothing could be richer than the con- 
trast of the bird's wild sweet notes, some of which he imitated 
with wonderful skill, and the accompaniment of the Cobbler's 
hoarse cracked voice, uttering all manner of endearing epithets, 



LITERARY LABOURS. 287 

which Johnny multiplied and varied in a style worthy of the 
Old Women in Eabelais at the birth of Pantagruel. I often 
wondered that Mathews, who borrowed so many good things 
from John Ballantyne, allowed this Cobbler, which was cer- 
tainly the masterpiece, to escape him. 

Scott himself had probably exceeded that evening the three 
glasses of wine sanctioned by his Sangrados. " I never," said 
Constable, " had found him so disposed to be communicative 
about what he meant to do. Though he had had a return of 
his illness but the day before, he continued for an hour or more 
to walk backwards and forwards on the green, talking and laugh- 
ing — he told us he was sure he would make a hit in a Glasgow 
weaver, whom he would ravel up with Rob ; and fairly outshone 
the Cobbler, in an extempore dialogue between the bailie and 
the cateran — something not unlike what the book gives us as 
passing in the Glasgow tolbooth." 

Mr. Puff might well exult in the " full and entire success " 
of his trip to Abbotsf ord. His friend had made it a sine qua non 
with Constable that he should have a third share in the book- 
seller's moiety of the bargain — and though Johnny had no 
more trouble about the publishing or selling of Rob Roy than 
his own Cobbler of Kelso, this stipulation had secured him a 
bonus of L.1200 before two years passed. Moreover, one must 
admire his adroitness in persuading Constable, during their 
journey back to Edinburgh, to relieve him of that fraction of 
his own old stock, with which his unhazardous share in the 
new transaction was burdened. Scott's kindness continued 
as long as John Ballantyne lived, to provide for him a con- 
stant succession of similar advantages at the same easy rate ; 
and Constable, from deference to Scott's wishes, and from views 
of bookselling policy, appears to have submitted to this heavy 
tax on his most important ventures. 

During the summer term, Scott seems to have laboured chiefly 
on his History of 1815 for the Register, which was published 
in August ; but he also found time to draw up a valuable in- 
troductory Essay for the richly embellished quarto, entitled 
" Border Antiquities," which came out a month later. Upon 
the rising of the Court, he made an excursion to the Lennox, 
chiefly that he might visit a cave at the head of Loch Lomond, 
Bald to have been a favourite retreat of his hero, Rob Roy, and 
thence to Glasgow, where, under the an spices of a kind and 
intelligent acquaintance, Mr. John Smith, bookseller, he re- 
freshed his recollection of the noble cathedral, and other locali- 
ties of the birthplace of Bailie Jarvie. 



288 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

By this time, the foundations of that part of the existing 
house of Abbotsford, which extends from the hall westwards 
to the original court-yard, had been laid : and Scott, on reach- 
ing home, found a new source of constant occupation in watching 
the proceedings of his masons. He had, moreover, no lack of 
employment further afield, — for he was now negotiating with 
another neighbouring landowner for the purchase of an addi- 
tion of more consequence than any he had hitherto made to his 
estate. In the course of the autumn he concluded this matter, 
and became, for the price of L. 10,000, proprietor of the lands 
of Toftjield. on which there had recently been erected a substan- 
tial mansion-house. This circumstance offered a temptation 
which much quickened Scott's zeal for completing his arrange- 
ment. The venerable Professor Fergusson had died a year 
before; his son Adam had been placed on half-pay; and Scott 
now saw the means of securing for himself, henceforth, the 
immediate neighbourhood of the companion of his youth, and 
his amiable sisters. Fergusson, who had written from the 
lines of Torres Yedras his hopes of finding, when the war 
should be over, some sheltering cottage upon the Tweed, within 
a walk of Abbotsford, was delighted to see his dreams realised ; 
and the family took up their residence next spring at the new 
house of Toftfield, on which Scott then bestowed, at the ladies' 
request, the name of Huntley Burn : — this more harmonious 
designation being taken from the mountain brook which passes 
through its garden. — the same famous in tradition as the scene 
of Thomas the Rhymer's interviews with the Queen of Fairy. 
The upper part of the Rhymer's Glen, through which this brook 
finds its way from the Cauldshields Loch to Toftfield, had been 
included in a previous purchase. He was now master of all 
these haunts of " True Thomas." and of the whole ground of the 
battle of Melrose, from SMrmisli-Jield to Turn-oxiain. His enjoy- 
ment of the new territory was, however, interrupted by various 
returns of his cramp, and the depression of spirit which always 
attended, in his case, the use of opium, the only medicine that 
seemed to have power over the disease. 

A pleasant incident belongs to August 1817. Scott had read 
the History of New York by Knickerbocker, shortly after its 
appearance in 1812 ; and the admirable humour of this early 
work had led him to anticipate the brilliant career which its 
author has since run. Campbell, being no stranger to Scott's 
estimation of Washington Irving' s genius, gave him a letter of 
introduction, which, halting his chaise on the high-road above 
Abbotsford, he modestly sent down to the house " with a card 



WASHINGTON IBVING. 289 

on which he had written, that he was on his way to the ruins 
of Melrose, and wished to know whether it would be agreeable 
to Mr. Scott to receive a visit from him in the course of the 
morning." 

"The noise of my chaise," says Irving, "had disturbed the quiet of the 
establishment. Out sallied the warder of the castle, a black greyhound, 
and leaping on one of the blocks of stone, began a furious barking. This 
alarm brought out the whole garrison of dogs, all open-mouthed and vocif- 
erous. In a little while the lord of the castle himself made his appear- 
ance. I knew him at once, by the likenesses that had been published of 
him. He came limping up the gravel walk, aiding himself by a stout 
walking-staff, but moving rapidly and with vigour. By his side jogged 
along a large iron-grey staghound, of most grave demeanour, who took no 
part in the clamour of the canine rabble, but seemed to consider himself 
bound, for the dignity of the house, to give me a courteous reception. — 
Before Scott reached the gate, he called out in a hearty tone, welcoming 
me to Abbotsford, and asking news of Campbell. Arrived at the door of 
the chaise, he grasped me warmly by the hand : ' Come, drive down, drive 
down to the house,' said he, 'ye're just in time for breakfast, and after- 
wards ye shall see all the wonders of the Abbey.' I would have excused 
myself on the plea of having already made my breakfast. ' Hut, man,' 
cried he, ' a ride in the morning in the keen air of the Scotch hills is war- 
rant enough for a second breakfast.' I was accordingly whirled to the 
portal of the cottage, and in a few moments found myself seated at the 
breakfast table. There was no one present but the family, which con- 
sisted of Mrs. Scott ; her eldest daughter, Sophia, then a fine girl about 
seventeen ; Miss Ann Scott, two or three years younger ; Walter, a well- 
grown stripling ; and Charles, a lively boy, eleven or twelve years of age. 
— I soon felt myself quite at home, and my heart in a glow, with the cor- 
dial welcome I experienced. I had thought to make a mere morning visit, 
but found I was not to be let off so lightly. ' You must not think our 
neighbourhood is to be read in a morning like a newspaper, 1 said Scott ; 
' it takes several days of study for an observant traveller, that has a relish 
for auld-world trumpery. After breakfast you shall make your visit to 
Melrose Abbey ; I shall not be able to accompany you, as I have some 
household affairs to attend to ; but I will put you in charge of my son 
Charles, who is very learned in all things touching the old ruin and the 
neighbourhood it stands in ; and he and my friend Johnnie Bower, will 
tell you the whole truth about it, with a great deal more that you are not 
called upon to believe, unless you be a true and nothing- doubting anti- 
quary. When you come back, I'll take you out on a ramble about the 
neighbourhood. To-morrow we will take a look at the Yarrow, and the 
next day we will drive over to Dry burgh Abbey, which is a fine old ruin, 
well worth your seeing.' — In a word, before Scott had got through with 
his plan, I found myself committed for a visit of several days, and it 
seemed as if a little realm of romance was suddenly open before me." 

After breakfast, while Scott, no doubt, wrote a chapter of 
Rob Roy, Mr. Irving, under young Charles's guidance, saw 
Melrose Abbey, and had much talk with old Bower, the show- 
man of the ruins, who was eager to enlighten in all things the 



290 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Sheriff's friends. " He'll come here sometimes," said Johnny, 
" with great folks in his company, and the first I'll know of it 
is his voice calling ont Johnny ! — Johnny Bower ! — and when 
I go ont I'm sure to be greeted with a joke or a pleasant word. 
He'll stand and crack an' langh Avi' me just like an auld wife 
— and to think that of a man that has such an awfu' knowledge 
o' history!" 

On his return from the Abbey, Irving found Scott ready for 
a ramble. 

"As we sallied forth," he writes, "every dog in the establishment 
turned out to attend us. There was the old staghound, Maida, that I 
have already mentioned, a noble animal, and Hamlet, the black grey- 
hound, a wild thoughtless youngster, not yet arrived at the years of 
discretion ; and Einette, a beautiful setter, with soft, silken hair, long 
pendant ears, and a mild eye, the parlour favourite. When in front of 
the house, we were joined by a superannuated greyhound, who came 
from the kitchen wagging his tail ; and was cheered by Scott as an old 
friend and comrade. In our walks, he would frequently pause in con- 
versation, to notice his dogs, and speak to them as if rational compan- 
ions ; and, indeed, there appears to be a vast deal of rationality in these 
faithful attendants on man, derived from their close intimacy with him. 
Maida deported himself with a gravity becoming his age and size, and 
seemed to consider himself called upon to preserve a great degree of dig- 
nity and decorum in our society. As he jogged along a little distance 
ahead of us, the young dogs would gambol about him, leap on his neck, 
worry at his ears, and endeavour to tease him into a gambol. The old 
dog would keep on for a long time with imperturbable solemnity, now 
and then seeming to rebuke the wantonness of his young companions. 
At length he would make a sudden turn, seize one of them, and tumble 
him in the dust, then giving a glance at us, as much as to say, ' You see, 
gentlemen, I can't help giving way to this nonsense,' would resume his 
gravity, and jog on as before. Scott amused himself with these peculiar- 
ities. ' I make no doubt,' said he, ' when Maida is alone with these young 
dogs, he throws gravity aside, and plays the boy as much as any of them ; 
but he is ashamed to do so in our company, and seems to say — Ha' done 
with your nonsense, youngsters ; what will the laird and that other gen- 
tleman think of me if I give way to such foolery ? ' Scott amused himself 
with the peculiarities of another of his dogs, a little shamefaced terrier, 
with large glassy eyes, one of the most sensitive little bodies to insult and 
indignity in the world. ' If ever he whipped him,' he said, ' the little fel- 
low would sneak off and hide himself from the light of clay in a lumber 
garret, from whence there was no drawing him forth but by the sound of 
the chopping-knife, as if chopping up his victuals, when he would steal 
forth with humiliated and downcast look, but would skulk away again if 
any one regarded him.' — His domestic animals were his friends. Every- 
thing about him seemed to rejoice in the light of his countenance. Our 
ramble took us on the hills commanding an extensive prospect. 'Now,' 
said Scott, ' I have brought you, like the pilgrim in the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress, to the top of the Delectable Mountains, that I may shew you all the 
goodly regions hereabouts.' ... I gazed about me for a time with mute 
surprise, I may almost say with disappointment. I beheld a mere sue- 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 291 

cession of grey waving hills, line beyond line, as far as my eye could 
reach, monotonous in their aspect, and so destitute of trees, that one 
could almost see a stout fly walking along their profile ; and the far- 
famed Tweed appeared a naked stream, flowing between bare hills, with- 
out a tree or thicket on its banks ; and yet such had been the magic web 
of poetry and romance thrown over the whole, that it had a greater charm 
for me than the richest scenery I had beheld in England. I could not 
help giving utterance to my thoughts. Scott hummed for a moment to 
himself, and looked grave ; he had no idea of having his muse compli- 
mented at the expense of his native hills. 'It may be pertinacity,' said 
he at length ; ' but to my eye, these grey hills, and all this wild border 
country, have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very naked- 
ness of the land; it has something bold, and stern, and solitary about 
it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edin- 
burgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself 
back again among my own honest grey hills ; and if I did not see the 
heather, at least once a year, I think I should die!" 1 The last words 
were said with an honest warmth, accompanied by a thump on the 
ground with his staff, by way of emphasis, that shewed his heart was ha. 
his speech. He vindicated the Tweed, too, as a beautiful stream in it- 
self ; and observed, that he did not dislike it for being bare of trees, prob- 
ably from having been much of an angler in his time ; and an angler does 
not like to have a stream overhung by trees, which embarrass him in the 
exercise of his rod and line. I took occasion to plead, in like manner, 
the associations of early life for my disappointment in respect to the sur- 
rounding scenery. I had been so accustomed to see hills crowned with 
forests, and streams breaking their way through a wilderness of trees, 
that all my ideas of romantic landscape were apt to be well wooded. 
'Ay, and that's the great charm of your country,' cried Scott. 'You 
love the forest as I do the heather ; but I would not have you think I 
do not love the glory of a great woodland prospect. There is nothing I 
should like more than to be in the midst of one of your grand wild orig- 
inal forests, with the idea of hundreds of miles of untrodden forest around 
me. I once saw at Leith an immense stick of timber just landed from 
America. It must have been an enormous tree when it stood in its na- 
tive soil, at its full height, and with all its branches. I gazed at it with 
admiration ; it seemed like one of the gigantic obelisks which are now 
and then brought from Egypt to shame the pigmy monuments of Europe ; 
and, in fact, these vast aboriginal trees, that have sheltered the Indians 
before the intrusion of the white men, are the monuments and antiquities 
of your country.' 

"The conversation here turned upon Campbell's poem of Gertrude of 
Wyoming, as illustrative of the poetic materials furnished by American 
scenery. Scott cited several passages of it with great delight. ' What 
a pity it is,' said he, ' that Campbell does not write more and oftener, 
and give full sweep to his genius ! He has wings that would bear him to 
the skies ; and he does, now and then, spread them grandly, but folds 
them up again, and resumes his perch, as if he was afraid to launch 
away. What a grand idea is that,' said he, ' about prophetic boding, or, 
in common parlance, second sight — 

Coming- events cast their shadows before ! — 

The fact is,' added he, ' Campbell is, in a manner, a bugbear to himself. 



292 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

The brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his further efforts. 
He is afraid of the shadow that his own fame casts before him.' 1 

" We had not walked much farther, before we saw the two Miss Scotts 
advancing along the hillside to meet us. The morning's studies being 
over, they had set off to take a ramble on the hills, and gather heather 
blossoms with which to decorate then; hair for dinner. As they came 
bounding lightly like young fawns, and their dresses fluttering in the 
pure summer breeze, I was reminded of Scott's own description of his 
children, in his introduction to one of the cantos of Marmion: — 

' My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild, 
As best befits the mountain child,' &c. 

As they approached, the dogs all sprung forward, and gambolled around 
them. They joined us with countenances full of health and glee. Sophia, 
the eldest, was the most lively and joyous, having much of her father's 
varied spirit in conversation, and seeming to catch excitement from his 
words and looks ; Ann was of a quieter mood, rather silent, owing, in 
some measure, no doubt, to her being some years younger." 

Having often, many years afterwards, heard Irving speak 
■warmly of William Laidlaw, I must not omit the following 

passage : — 

"One of my pleasantest rambles with Scott about the neighbourhood 
of Abbotsford, was taken in company with Mr. "William Laidlaw, the 
steward of his estate. This was a gentleman for whom Scott entertained 
a particular value. He had been born to a competency, had been well 
educated, his mind was richly stored with varied information, and he 
was a man of sterling moral worth. Having been reduced by misfort- 
une, Scott had got him to take charge of his estate. He lived at a small 
farm, on the hillside above Abbotsford, and was treated by Scott as a 
cherished and confidential friend, rather than a dependant. That day at 
dinner we had Mr. Laidlaw and his wife, and a female friend who ac- 
companied them. The latter was a very intelligent respectable person, 
about the middle age, and was treated with particular attention and cour- 
tesy by Scott. Our dinner was a most agreeable one, for the guests were 
evidently cherished visitors to the house, and felt that they were appre- 
ciated. When they were gone, Scott spoke of them in the most cordial 
manner. 'I wish to shew you,' said he, 'some of our really excellent, 
plain Scotch people : not fine gentlemen and ladies, for such you can 
meet everywhere, and they are everywhere the same. The character of 
a nation is not to be learnt from its fine folks. ' He then went on with 
a particular eulogium on the lady who had accompanied the Laidlaws. 
She was the daughter, he said, of a poor country clergyman, who had 
died in debt, and left her an orphan and destitute. Having had a good 
plain education, she immediately set up a child's school, and had soon a 
numerous flock under her care, by which she earned a decent mainte- 
nance. That, however, was not her main object. Her first care was to 
pay off her father's debts, that no ill word or ill will might rest upon his 
memory. This, by dint of Scotch economy, backed by filial reverence 
and pride, she accomplished, though in the effort she subjected herself to 
every privation. Not content with this, she in certain instances refused 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 293 

to take pay for the tuition of the children of some of her neighbours, who 
had befriended her father in his need, and had since fallen into poverty. 
'In a word,' added Scott, 'she's a fine old Scotch girl, and I delight in 
her more than in many a fine lady I have known, and I have known 
many of the finest.' 

"The evening having passed away delightfully in a quaint-looking 
apartment, half study, half drawing-room, Scott read several passages 
from the old Romance of Arthur, with a fine deep sonorous voice, and a 
gravity of tone that seemed to suit the antiquated black-letter volume. 
It was a rich treat to hear such a work read by such a person, and in 
such a place ; and his appearance, as he sat reading, in a large arm-chair, 
with his favourite hound Maida at his feet, and surrounded by books and 
reliques, and Border trophies, would have formed an admirable and 
most characteristic picture. When I retired for the night, I found it 
almost impossible to sleep : the idea of being under the roof of Scott ; of 
being on the Borders on the Tweed ; in the very centre of that region 
which had, for some time past, been the favourite scene of romantic 
fiction ; and, above all, the recollections of the ramble I had taken, the 
company in which I had taken it, and the conversation which had passed, 
all fermented in my mind, and nearly drove sleep from my pillow. 

"On the following morning the sun darted his beams from over the 
hills through the low lattice of my window. I rose at an early hour, and 
looked out between the branches of eglantine which overhung the case- 
ment. To my surprise, Scott was already up, and forth, seated on a 
fragment of stone, and chatting with the workmen employed in the new 
building. I had supposed, after the time he had wasted upon me yester- 
day, he would be closely occupied this morning : but he appeared like a 
man of leisure, who had nothing to do but bask in the sunshine and 
amuse himself. I soon dressed myself and joined him. He talked about 
his proposed plans of Abbotsford : happy would it have been for him 
could he have contented himself with his delightful little vine-covered 
cottage, and the simple, yet hearty and hospitable, style in which he 
lived at the time of my visit. ' ' 

These lines to the elder Ballantyne are without date. They 
accompanied, no doubt, the last proof-sheet of Rob Roy, and 
were therefore in all probability written about ten days before 
the 31st of December 1817 — on which day the novel was 
published. 

" With great joy 
I send you Roy. 
'Twas a tough job, 
But we're done with Rob." 

The novel had indeed been " a tough job" — for lightly and 
airily as it reads, the author had struggled almost throughout 
with the pains of cramp or the lassitude of opium. Calling on 
him one day to dun him for copy, James found him with a 
clean pen and a blank sheet before him, and uttered some 
rather solemn exclamation of surprise. " Ay, ay, Jemmy," 
said he, " 'tis easy for you to bid me get on, but how the deuce 



294 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

can I make Rob Roy's wife speak, with suck a curmurring in 
my guts ? " 

Rob and his wife, Bailie Jarvie and his housekeeper, Die 
Vernon and Rashleigh Osbaldistone — these boldly drawn and 
happily contrasted personages — were welcomed as warmly as 
the most fortunate of their predecessors. Constable's resolu- 
tion to begin with an edition of 10,000, proved to have been as 
sagacious as brave ; for within a fortnight a second 3000 was 
called for. 

Scott, however, had not waited for this new burst of applause. 
As soon as he came within view of the completion of Rob Roy, 
he desired John Ballantyne to propose to Constable a second 
series of the Tales of my Landlord, to be comprised, like the 
first, in four volumes, and ready for publication by "the 
King's birth-day ; " that is, the 4th of June 1818. " I have 
hungered and thirsted," he wrote, "to see the end of those 
shabby borrowings among friends ; they have all been wiped 
out except the good Duke's L.4000 — and I will not suffer either 
new offers of land or anything else to come in the way of that 
clearance. I expect that you will be able to arrange this resur- 
rection of Jedediah, so that L.5000 shall be at my order." 

Mr. Rigdum used to glory in recounting that he acquitted 
himself on this occasion with a species of dexterity not con- 
templated in his commission. He well knew how sorely Con- 
stable had been wounded by seeing the first Tales of Jedediah 
published by Murray and Blackwood — and that the utmost 
success of Rob Roy would only double his anxiety to keep 
them out of the field, when the hint should be dropt that a 
second MS. from Gandercleuch might shortly be looked for. 
John therefore took a convenient opportunity to mention the 
new scheme as if casually — so as to give Constable the 
impression that the author's purpose was to divide the second 
series also between his old rival in Albemarle Street, of whom 
his jealousy was always sensitive, and his neighbour Black- 
wood, whom, if there had been no other grudge, the recent 
conduct and rapidly increasing sale of his Magazine would 
have been sufficient to make Constable hate with a perfect 
hatred. To see not only his old Scots Magazine eclipsed, 
but the authority of the Edinburgh Review itself bearded on 
its own soil by this juvenile upstart, was to him gall and 
wormwood ; and, moreover, he himself had come in for his 
share in some of those grotesque jeux (Vesprit by which Black- 
wood's young Tory wags delighted to assail their elders and 
betters of the Whig persuasion. To prevent the proprietor of 



PUBLICATION OF ROB EOT. 295 

this new journal from acquiring anything like a hold on the 
author of Waverley, and thus competing with himself not only 
in periodical literature, but in the highest of the time, was an 
object for which, as John Ballantyne shrewdly guessed, Con- 
stable would have made at that moment almost any sacrifice. 
When, therefore, the haughty but trembling bookseller — "The 
Lord High Constable" (as he had been dubbed by these 
jesters) — signified his earnest hope that the second Tales 
of my Landlord were destined to come out uuder the same 
auspices with Eob Koy, the plenipotentiary answered with an 
air of deep regret, that he feared it would be impossible for 
the author to dispose of the work — unless to publishers who 
should agree to take with it the ivhole of the remaining stock 
of " John Ballantyne & Co. ; " and Constable, pertinaciously as 
he had stood out against many more modest propositions of 
this nature, was so worked upon by his jealous feelings, that 
his resolution at once gave way. He agreed on the instant to 
do all that John seemed to shrink from asking — and at one 
sweep cleared the Augean stable in Hanover Street of unsale- 
able rubbish to the amount of L.5270 ! I am assured by his 
surviving partner, that when he had finally redisposed of the 
stock, he found himself a loser by fully two-thirds of this sum. 
Burthened with this heavy condition, the agreement for the 
sale of 10,000 copies of the embryo series was signed before 
the end of November 1817 ; and on the 7th January 1818, 
Scott wrote to his noble friend of Buccleuch, — "I have the 
great pleasure of enclosing the discharged bond which your 
Grace stood engaged in on my account." 

The time now approached when a Commission to examine 
the Crown-room in the Castle of Edinburgh, which had sprung 
from one of Scott's conversations with the Prince Eegent in 
1815, was at length to be acted upon ; and the result was the 
discovery of the long-lost regalia of Scotland. Of the official 
proceedings of the 4th Feb. 1818, the reader has a full and 
particular account in an Essay which Scott penned shortly 
afterwards ; but I may add a little incident of the 5th. He 
and several of his brother Commissioners then revisited the 
Castle, accompanied by some of the ladies of their families. 
His daughter Sophia told me that her father's conversation 
had worked her feelings up to such a pitch, that when the lid 
was again removed, she nearly fainted, and drew back from the 
circle. As she was retiring, she was startled by his voice 
exclaiming, in a tone of the deepest emotion, " something be- 
tween anger and despair," as she expressed it, " By G — , No ! n 



296 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

One of the Commissioners, not quite entering into the solem- 
nity with which Scott regarded this business, had it seems made 
a sort of motion as if he meant to put the crown on the head 
of one of the young ladies near him, but the voice and aspect 
of the Poet were more than sufficient to make the worthy gen- 
tleman understand his error ; and respecting the enthusiasm 
with which he had not been taught to sympathise, he laid down 
the ancient diadem with an air of painful embarrassment. Scott 
whispered, " Pray forgive me ; " and turning round at the 
moment, observed his daughter deadly pale, and leaning by the 
door. He immediately drew her out of the room, and when 
the air had somewhat recovered her, walked with her across 
the Mound to Castle Street. "He never spoke all the way 
home," she said, "but every now and then I felt his arm 
tremble ; and from that time I fancied he began to treat me 
more like a woman than a child. I thought he liked me better, 
too, than he had ever done before." 

At this moment, his position, take it for all in all, was, I am 
inclined to believe, what no other man had ever won for him- 
self by the pen alone. His works were the daily food, not 
only of his countrymen, but of all educated Europe. His soci- 
ety was courted by whatever England could shew of eminence. 
Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, strove with each 
other in every demonstration of respect and worship, and — a 
few political fanatics and envious poetasters apart — wherever 
he appeared in town or country, whoever had Scotch blood in 
him, " gentle or simple," felt it move more rapidly through his 
veins when he was in the presence of Scott. To descend to what 
many looked on as higher things, he considered himself, and 
was considered by all about him, as rapidly consolidating a 
large fortune : — the annual profits of his novels alone had, for 
several years, been not less than L. 10,000 ; his domains were 
daily increased — his castle was rising — and perhaps few 
doubted that ere long he might receive from the just favour of 
his Prince some distinction in the way of external rank, such 
as had seldom before been dreamt of as the possible conse- 
quences of a mere literary celebrity. It was about this time 
that the compiler of these pages first had the opportunity of 
observing the plain easy modesty which had survived the many 
temptations of such a career ; and the kindness of heart per- 
vading, in all circumstances, his gentle deportment, which made 
him the rare, perhaps the solitary, example of a man signally 
elevated from humble beginnings, and loved more and more 
by his earliest friends and connexions, in proportion as he had 



HIS FAME. 297 

fixed on himself the homage of the great and the wonder of 
the world. 

It was during the sitting of the General Assembly of the 
Kirk in May 1818, that I first had the honour of meeting him 
in private society : the party was not a large one, at the house 
of a much-valued common friend — Mr. Home Drummond, the 
grandson of Lord Karnes. Mr. Scott, ever apt to consider too 
favourably the literary efforts of others, and more especially of 
very young persons, received me, when I was presented to him, 
with a cordiality which I had not been prepared to expect from 
one filling a station so exalted. This, however, is the same story 
that every individual, who ever met him under similar circum- 
stances, has had to tell. When the ladies retired from the 
dinner-table, I happened to sit next him ; and he, having heard 
that I had lately returned from a tour in Germany, made that 
country and its recent literature the subject of some conversa- 
tion. In the course of it, I told him that when, on reaching 
the inn at Weimar, I asked the waiter whether Goethe was 
then in the town, the man stared as if he had not heard the 
name before ; and that on my repeating the question, adding 
Goethe der grosse clichter (the great poet), he shook his head as 
doubtfully as before — until the landlady solved our difficul- 
ties, by suggesting that perhaps the traveller might mean " the 
Herr Geheimer-Hath (Privy Counsellor) Von Goethe." — Scott 
seemed amused with this, and said, " I hope you will come one 
of these days and see me at Abbotsford ; and when you reach 
Selkirk or Melrose, be sure you ask even the landlady for no- 
body but the Sheriff" He appeared particularly interested 
when I described Goethe as I first saw him, alighting from a 
carriage crammed with wild plants and herbs which he had 
picked up in the course of his morning's botanising among the 
hills above Jena. " I am glad," said he, " that my old master has 
pursuits somewhat akin to my own. I am no botanist, prop- 
erly speaking; and though a dweller on the banks of the 
Tweed, shall never be knowing about Flora's beauties ; x but 
how I should like to have a talk with him about trees ! " I 
mentioned how much any one must be struck with the majes- 
tic beauty of Goethe's countenance — the noblest certainly by 
far that I have ever yet seen — " Well," said he, " the grandest 
demigod I ever saw was Dr. Carlyle, minister of Musselburgh, 
commonly called Jupiter Carlyle, from having sat more than 

1 " What beauties does Flora disclose, 

How sweet are her smiles upon Tweed," &c. 

Crawford. 



298 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

once for the king of gods and men to Gavin Hamilton — and 
a shrewd, clever old carle was he, no doubt, but no more a poet 
than his precentor. As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the 
best of our own time and country — and though Burns had the 
most glorious eyes imaginable, I never thought any of them 
would come up to an artist's notion of the character, except 
Byron." Principal Nicol of St. Andrew's expressed his 
regret that he had never seen Lord Byron. "And the prints," 
resumed Scott, " give one no impression of him — the lustre is 
there, Doctor, but it is not lighted up. Byron's countenance is 
a tiling to dream of. A certain fair lady, whose name has been 
too often mentioned in connexion with his, told a friend of 
mine, that when she first saw Byron, it was in a crowded room, 
and she did not know who it was, but her eyes were instantly 
nailed, and she said to herself, that pale face is my fate. And, 
poor soul, if a godlike face and godlike powers could have 
made any excuse for devilry, to be sure she had one." In the 
course of this talk, Sir P. Murray of Ochtertyre, an old friend 
and schoolfellow of Scott's, asked him, across the table, if he 
had any faith in the antique busts of Homer. " No, truly," he 
answered, smiling, "for if there had been either limners or 
stuccoyers worth their salt in those days, the owner of such a 
headpiece would never have had to trail the poke. They would 
have alimented the honest man decently among them for a 
lay-figure." 

A few days after this, I received a communication from the 
Messrs. Ballantyne, to the effect that Mr. Scott's various avo- 
cations had prevented him from fulfilling his agreement with 
them as to the historical department of the Edinburgh Annual 
Eegister for 1816, and that it would be acceptable to him as 
well as them, if I could undertake to supply it in the course of 
the autumn. This proposal was agreed to, and I had conse- 
quently occasion to meet him pretty often during that summer 
session. He told me, that if the war had gone on, he should 
have liked to do the historical summary as before ; but that 
the prospect of having no events to record but radical riots, 
and the passing or rejecting of corn bills and poor bills, sick- 
ened him ; that his health was no longer what it had been ; 
and that though he did not mean to give over writing altogether 
— (here he smiled significantly, and glanced his eye towards 
a pile of MS. on the desk by him) — he thought himself now 
entitled to write nothing but what would rather be an amuse- 
ment than a fatigue to him. — " Juniores ad labores." 

He at this time occupied as his den a small square room, 



HIS DEN. 299 

behind the dining parlour in Castle Street. It had bnt a 
single Venetian window, opening on a patch of turf not much 
larger than itself, and the aspect of the place was on the whole 
sombrous. The walls were entirely clothed with books ; most 
of them folios and quartos, and all in that complete state of 
repair which at a glance reveals a tinge of -bibliomania. A 
dozen volumes or so, needful for immediate purposes of refer- 
ence, were placed close by him on a small moveable frame — 
something like a dumb-waiter. All the rest were in their proper 
niches, and wherever a volume had been lent, its room was 
occupied by a wooden block of the same size, having a card 
with the name of the borrower and date of the loan, tacked on 
its front. The old bindings had obviously been retouched and 
regilt in the most approved manner ; the. new, when the books 
were of any mark, were rich, but never gaudy — a large propor- 
tion of blue morocco — all stamped with his device of the port- 
cullis, and its motto, dausus tutus ero — being an. anagram of 
his name in Latin. Every case and shelf was accurately lettered, 
and the works arranged systematically ; history and biography 
on one side — poetry and the drama on another — law books 
and dictionaries behind his own chair. The only table was a 
massive piece of furniture which he had had constructed on the 
model of one at E-okeby ; with a desk and all its appurtenances 
on either side, that an amanuensis might work opposite to him 
when he chose ; and with small tiers of drawers, reaching all 
round to the floor. The top displayed a goodly array of session 
papers, and on the desk below were, besides the MS. at which 
he was working, sundry parcels of letters, proof-sheets, and so 
forth, all neatly done up with red tape. His own writing ap- 
paratus was a very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with 
crimson velvet, and containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, &c. in 
silver — the whole in such order that it might have come from 
the silversmith's window half an hour before. Besides his own 
huge elbow-chair, there were but two others in the room, and 
one of these seemed, from its position, to be reserved exclusively 
for the amanuensis. I observed, during the first evening I 
spent with him in this sanctum, that while he talked, his hands 
were hardly ever idle ; sometimes he folded letter-covers — 
sometimes he twisted paper into matches, performing both 
tasks with great mechanical expertncss and nicety ; and when 
there was no loose paper fit to be so dealt with, he snapped 
his ringers, and the noble Maida aroused himself from his lair 
on the hearth-rug, and laid his head across his master's knees, 
to be caressed and fondled. The room had no space for pict- 



300 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

ures except one, a portrait of Claverhouse, which hung over 
the chimneypiece, with a Highland target on either side, and 
broadswords and dirks (each having its own story) disposed 
star-fashion round them. A few green tin-boxes, such as solic- 
itors keep title-deeds in, were piled over each other on one side 
of the window ; and on the top of these lay a fox's tail, mounted 
on an antique silver handle, wherewith, as often as he had 
occasion to take down a book, he gently brushed the dust off 
the upper leaves before opening it. I think I have mentioned 
all the furniture of the room except a sort of ladder, low, broad, 
well carpeted, and strongly guarded with oaken rails, by which 
he helped himself to books from his higher shelves. On the 
top step of this convenience, Hinse of Hinsfeldt (so called from 
one of the German Kinder-marchen), a venerable tom-cat, fat 
and sleek, and no longer very locomotive, usually lay watching 
the proceedings of his master and Maida with an air of digni- 
fied equanimity ; but when Maida chose to leave the party, he 
signified his inclinations by thumping the door with his huge 
paw, as violently as ever a fashionable footman handled a 
knocker in Grosvenor Square ; the Sheriff rose and opened it for 
him with courteous alacrity, — and then Hinse came down purr- 
ing from his perch, and mounted guard by the footstool, vice 
Maida absent upon furlough. Whatever discourse might be 
passing, was broken every now and then by some affectionate 
apostrophe to these four-footed friends. He said they under- 
stood everything he said to them — and I believe they did 
understand a great deal of it. But at all events, dogs and cats, 
like children, have some infallible tact for discovering at once 
who is, and who is not, really fond of their company ; and I vent- 
ure to say, Scott was never five minutes in any room before 
the little pets of the family, whether dumb or lisping, had 
found out his kindness for all their generation. 

I never thought it lawful to keep a journal of what passes 
in private society, so that no one need expect from the sequel 
of this narrative any detailed record of Scott's familiar talk. 
What fragments of it have happened to adhere to a tolerably 
retentive memory, and may be put into black and white with- 
out wounding any feelings which my friend, were he alive, 
would have wished to spare, I shall introduce as the occasion 
suggests or serves. But I disclaim on the threshold anything 
more than this ; and I also wish to enter a protest once for all 
against the general fidelity of several literary gentlemen who 
have kindly forwarded to me private lucubrations of theirs, 
designed to Boswellise Scott, and which they may probably 



HIS PRIVATE LIFE. 301 

publish hereafter. To report conversations fairly, it is a nec- 
essary prerequisite that we should be completely familiar with 
all the interlocutors, and understand thoroughly all their mi- 
nutest relations, and points of common knowledge and common 
feeling, with each other. He who does not, must be perpetu- 
ally in danger of misinterpreting sportive allusions into serious 
statement ; and the man who was only recalling, by some jocu- 
lar phrase or half-phrase, to an old companion, some trivial 
reminiscence of their boyhood or youth, may be represented as 
expressing, upon some person or incident casualty tabled, an 
opinion which he had never framed, or if he had, would never 
have given words to in any mixed assemblage — not even among 
what the world calls friends at his own board. In proportion 
as a man is witty and humorous, there will always be about 
him and his a widening maze and wilderness of cues and catch- 
words, which the uninitiated will, if they are bold enough to 
try interpretation, construe, ever and anon, egregiously. amiss 
— not seldom into arrant falsity. For this one reason, to say 
nothing of many others, I consider no man justified in journal- 
ising what he sees and hears in a domestic circle where he is 
not thoroughly at home ; and I think there are still higher and 
better reasons why he should not do so where he is. 

Before I ever met Scott in private, I had, of course, heard 
many people describe and discuss his style of conversation. 
Everybody seemed to agree that it overflowed with hearty 
good-humour, as well as plain unaffected good sense and sagac- 
ity ; but I had heard not a few persons of undoubted ability 
and accomplishment maintain, that the genius of the great poet 
and novelist rarely, if ever, revealed itself in his talk. It is 
needless to say, that the persons I allude to were all his own 
countrymen, and themselves imbued, more or less, with the 
conversational habits derived from a system of education in 
which the study of metaphysics occupies a very large share 
of attention. The best table-talk of Edinburgh was, and prob- 
ably still is, in a very great measure made up of brilliant dis- 
quisition — such as might be transferred without alteration to 
a professor's note-book, or the pages of a critical Review — and 
of sharp word-catchings, ingenious thrusting and parrying of 
dialectics, and all the quips and quibblets of bar pleading. 
It was the talk of a society to which lawyers and lecturers 
had, for at least a hundred years, given the tone. From the 
date of the Union, Edinburgh ceased to be the headquarters 
of the Scotch nobility — and long before the time of which I 
speak, they had all but entirely abandoned it as a place of resi- 



302 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

dence. I think I never knew above two or three of the Peer- 
age to have houses there at the same time — and these were 
usually among the poorest and most insignificant of their order. 
The wealthier gentry had followed their example. Very few 
of that class ever spent any considerable part of the year in 
Edinburgh, except for the purposes of educating their children, 
or superintending the progress of a lawsuit; and these were 
not more likely than a score or two of comatose and lethargic 
old Indians, to make head against the established influences 
of academical and forensic celebrity. Now Scott's tastes and 
resources had not much in common with those who had in- 
herited and preserved the chief authority in this provincial 
hierarchy of rhetoric. He was highly amused with watching 
their dexterous logomachies — but his delight in such displays 
arose mainly, I cannot doubt, from the fact of their being, 
both as to subject-matter and style and method, remote a Scce- 
volce studiis. He sat by, as he would have done at a stage-play 
or a fencing-match, enjoying and applauding the skill exhibited, 
but without feeling much ambition to parade himself as a 
rival either of the foil or the buskin. I can easily believe, 
therefore, that in the earlier part of his life — before the blaze 
of universal fame had overawed local prejudice, and a new 
generation, accustomed to hear of that fame from their infancy, 
had grown up — it may have been the commonly adopted creed 
in Edinburgh, that Scott, however distinguished otherwise, was 
not to be named as a table-companion in the same day with 
this or that master of luminous dissertation or quick rejoinder, 
who now sleeps as forgotten as his grandmother. It was natu- 
ral enough that persons brought up in the same circle with him, 
who remembered all his beginnings, and had but slowly learned 
to acquiesce in the justice of his claim to unrivalled honour in 
literature, should have clung all the closer for that late acqui- 
escence to their original estimate of him as inferior to them- 
selves in other titles to admiration. It was also natural that 
their prejudice on that score should be readily taken up by the 
young aspirants who breathed, as it were, the atmosphere of 
their professional renown. Perhaps, too, Scott's steady Tory- 
ism, and the effect of his genius and example in modifying the 
intellectual sway of the long dominant Whigs in the north, may 
have had some share in this matter. However all that may 
have been, the substance of what I had been accustomed to 
hear certainly was, that Scott had a marvellous stock of queer 
stories, which he often told with happy effect, but that, bating 
these drafts on a portentous memory, set off with a simple old- 



SCOTT IK EDINBURGH. 303 

fashioned naivete of humour and pleasantry, his strain of talk 
was remarkable neither for depth of remark nor felicity of 
illustration ; that his views and opinions on the most impor- 
tant topics of practical interest were hopelessly perverted by 
his blind enthusiasm for the dreams of by-gone ages ; and that, 
but for the grotesque phenomenon presented by a great writer 
of the nineteenth century gravely uttering sentiments worthy 
of his own Dundees and Invernahyles, the main texture of his 
discourse would be pronounced by any enlightened member of 
modern society, rather bald and poor than otherwise. I think 
the epithet most in vogue was commonplace. 

It will be easily believed, that, in companies such as I have 
been alluding to, made up of, or habitually domineered over, 
by voluble Whigs and political economists, Scott was often 
tempted to put forth his Tory doctrines and antiquarian prej- 
udices in an exaggerated shape, in colours, to say the truth, 
altogether different from what they assumed under other cir- 
cumstances, or which had any real influence upon his mind 
and conduct on occasions of practical moment. But I fancy it 
will seem equally credible, that the most sharp-sighted of these 
social critics may not always have been capable of tracing, and 
doing justice to, the powers which Scott brought to bear upon 
the topics which they, not he, had chosen for discussion. In 
passing from a gas-lit hall into a room with wax candles, the 
guests sometimes complain that they have left splendour for 
gloom ; but let them try by what sort of light it is most satis- 
factory to read, write, Or embroider, or consider at leisure under 
which of the two either men or women look their best. 

The strongest, purest, and least observed of all lights, is, 
however, daylight; and his talk was commonplace, just as 
sunshine is, which gilds the most indifferent objects, and adds 
brilliancy to the brightest. As for the old-world anecdotes 
which these clever persons were condescending enough to 
laugh at as pleasant extravagances, serving merely to relieve 
and set off the main stream of debate, they were often enough, 
it may be guessed, connected with the theme in hand by links 
not the less apt that they might be too subtle to catch their 
bedazzled and self-satisfied optics. There might be keener 
knowledge of human nature than was "dreamt of in their 
philosophy " — which passed with them for commonplace, only 
because it was clothed in plain familiar household words, 
not dressed up in some pedantic masquerade of antithesis. 
" There are people," says Landor, " who think they write and 
speak finely, merely because they have forgotten the language 



304 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

in which their fathers and mothers used to talk to them ; " and 
surely there are a thousand homely old proverbs, which many 
a dainty modern would think it beneath his dignity to quote 
either in speech or writing, any one of which condenses more 
wit (take that word in any of its senses) than could be ex- 
tracted from all that was ever said or written by the doctri- 
naires of the Edinburgh school. Many of those gentlemen held 
Scott's conversation to be commonplace exactly for the same 
reason that a child thinks a perfectly limpid stream, though 
perhaps deep enough to drown it three times over, must needs be 
shallow. But it will be easily believed that the best and high- 
est of their own idols had better means and skill of measure- 
ment : I can never forget the pregnant expression of one of 
the ablest of that school and party — Lord Cockburn — who, 
when some glib youth chanced to echo in his hearing the 
consolatory tenet of local mediocrity, answered quietly — "I 
have the misfortune to think differently from you — in my 
humble opinion, Walter Scott's sense is a still more wonderful 
thing than his genius" 

Indeed I have no sort of doubt that, long before 1818, full 
justice was done to Scott, even in these minor things, by all 
those of his Edinburgh acquaintance, whether Whig or Tory, 
on whose personal opinion he could have been supposed to set 
much value. With few exceptions, the really able lawyers of 
his own or nearly similar standing, had ere that time attained 
stations of judicial dignity, or were in the springtide of prac- 
tice ; and in either case they were likely to consider general 
society much in his own fashion, as the joyous relaxation of 
life, rather than the theatre of exertion and display. Their 
tables were elegantly, some of them sumptuously, spread ; and 
they lived in a pretty constant interchange of entertainments, 
in every circumstance of which, conversation included, it was 
their ambition to imitate those voluptuous metropolitan circles, 
wherein most of them had from time to time mingled, and sev- 
eral of them with distinguished success. Among such prosper- 
ous gentlemen, like himself past the mezzo cammin, Scott's 
picturesque anecdotes, rich easy humour, and gay involuntary 
glances of mother-wit, were, it is not difficult to suppose, ap- 
preciated above contributions of a more ambitious stamp ; and 
no doubt his London reputation de salon (which had by degrees 
risen to a high pitch, although he cared nothing for it) was 
not without its effect in Edinburgh. But still the old preju- 
dice lingered on in the general opinion of the place, especially 
among the smart praters of the Outer-House. 



SCOTT IN EDINBURGH. 305 

In truth, it was impossible to listen to Scott's oral narrations, 
whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which 
he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better 
qualities in his talk than wit — and of a higher order ; I mean 
especially a power of vivid painting — the true and primary 
sense of what is called Imagination. He was like Jacques — 
though not a " Melancholy Jacques ; " and " moralised " a 
common topic " into a thousand similitudes." Shakspeare and 
the banished Duke would have found him " full of matter." 
He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and prepared 
impromptus in London; and puzzled the promoters of such 
things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merri- 
ment. To such men he seemed commonplace — not so to the 
most dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost 
a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore, or Rogers, — to 
Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning. 

Scott managed to give and receive such great dingers as I 
have been alluding to, at least as often as anyu^ier private 
gentleman in Edinburgh ; but he very rarely accompanied his 
wife and daughters to the evening assemblies, which commonly 
ensued under other roofs — for early to rise, unless in the case 
of spare-fed anchorites, takes for granted early to bed. When 
he had no dinner engagement, he frequently gave a few hours 
to the theatre; but still more frequently, when the weather 
was fine, and still more, I believe, to his own satisfaction, he 
drove out with some of his family, or a single friend, in an 
open carriage ; the favourite rides being either to the Blackford 
Hills, or' to Ravelston, and so home by Corstorphine ; or to the 
beach of Portobello, where Peter was always instructed to 
keep his horses as near as possible to the sea. More than once, 
even in the first summer of my acquaintance with him, I had 
the pleasure of accompanying him on these evening excur- 
sions ; and never did he seem to enjoy himself more fully than 
when placidly surveying, at such sunset or moonlight hours, 
either the massive outlines of his "own romantic town," or 
the tranquil expanse of its noble estuary. He delighted, too, 
in passing when he could, through some of the quaint wind- 
ings of the ancient city itself, now deserted, except at mid- 
day, by the upper world. How often have I seen him go a 
long way round about, rather than miss the opportunity of 
halting for a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holy- 
rood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where 
it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still 
marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had 



306 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a 
Jehu's pace amidst such scenes as these. No fuueral hearse 
crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or 
the Cowgate ; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to 
him some long-buried memory of splendour or bloodshed, 
which, by a few words, he set before the hearer in the reality 
of life. His image is so associated in my mind with the antiq- 
uities of his native place, that I cannot now revisit them 
without feeling as if I were treading on his gravestone. 

Whatever might happen on the other evenings of the week, 
he always dined at home on Sunday, and usually some few 
friends were then with him, but never any person with whom 
he stood on ceremony. These were, it may be readily sup- 
posed, the most agreeable of his entertainments. He came 
into the room rubbing his hands, his face bright and gleesome, 
like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and 
Mustard-., gambolling about his heels, and even the stately 
Maida grinning and wagging his tail in sympathy. Among 
ne most regular guests on these happy evenings were, in my 
time, as had long before been the case, Mrs. Maclean Clephane 
of Torloisk (with whom he agreed cordially on all subjects 
except the authenticity of Ossian), and her daughters, whose 
guardian he had become at their choice. The eldest of them 
had been for some years married to the Earl of Compton (now 
Marquis of Northampton), and was of course seldom in the 
north ; but the others had much of the same tastes and accom- 
plishments which so highly distinguished the late Lady North- 
ampton ; and Scott delighted especially in their proficiency in 
the poetry and music of their native isles. Mr. and Mrs. 
Skene of Rubislaw were frequent attendants — and so were the 
Macdonald-Buchanans of Drumakiln, whose eldest daughter, 
Isabella, was his chief favourite among all his nieces of the 
Clerks' table — as was, among the iwphews, my own dear friend 
and companion, Joseph Hume, a singularly graceful young 
man, rich in the promise of hereditary genius, but, alas ! cut 
off in the early bloom of his days. The well-beloved Erskine 
was seldom absent ; and very often Terry or James Ballantyne 
came with him — sometimes, though less frequently, Constable. 
Among other persons who now and then appeared at these 
"dinners without the silver dishes," as Scott called them, I 
may mention — to say nothing of such old cronies as Mr. 
Clerk, Mr. Thomson, and Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe — Sir Alex- 
ander Boswell of Auchinleck, who had all his father Bozzi/s 
cleverness, good-humour, jovial ty, without one touch of his 



SCOTT IN EDINBURGH. 307 

meaner qualities — wrote Jenny dang the Weaver, and some 
other popular songs, which he sang capitally — and was more- 
over a thorough bibliomaniac ; the late Sir Alexander Don of 
Newton, in all courteous and elegant accomplishments the 
model of a cavalier ; and last, not least, William Allan, R.A., 
who had shortly before this time returned to Scotland from 
several years of travel in Russia and Turkey. At one of these 
plain hearty dinners, however, the company rarely exceeded 
three or four, besides the as yet undivided family. 

Scott had a story of a topping goldsmith on the Bridge, 
who prided himself on being the mirror of Amphitryons, and 
accounted for his success by stating that it was his invariabh -, 
custom to set his own stomach at ease, by a beefsteak and a 
pint of port in his back-shop, half-an-hour before the arrive al 
of his guests. But the host of Castle Street had no occas' on 
to imitate this prudent arrangement, for his appetite at d; ■' iier 
was neither keen nor nice. Breakfast was his chief -?tmal. 
Before that came, he had gone through the severest paf't of 
his day's work, and then he set to with the zeal of Cr? abbe's 
Squire Tovell — 

" And laid at once a pound upon his plate." 



( j>V> foxhunter ever prepared himself for the field btf more sub- 
stantial appliances. His table was always pre a ' ^d, in addi- 
tion to the usually plentiful delicacies of a Scc^ ?h breakfast, 
with some solid article, on which he did most lw7 execution 

^-a round of beef — a pasty, such as made Gil'. Bias's eyes 
i^ater — or, most welcome of all, a cold sheep's head, the 
aarms of which primitive dainty he has so gallan^y defended 

iTjainst the disparaging sneers of Dr. Johnson aild his bear- 
, ^''er. 1 A huge brown loaf flanked his elbow, and it was 

fplac'fcvl v.rjon a broad wooden trencher, that he might cut and 

\ come again with the bolder knife. Often did the Clerks' coach, 
commonly called among themselves the Lively — which trun- 
dled round every morning to pick up the brotherhood, and 
then deposited them at the proper minute in the Parliament 
Close — often did this lumbering hackney arrive at his door 
before he had fully appeased what Homer calls " the sacred 
rage of hunger ; " and vociferous was the merriment of the 
learned uncles, when the surprised poet swung forth to join 
them, with an extemporised sandwich, that looked like a 
ploughman's luncheon in his hand. But this robust supply 

1 See Croker's Boswell (edit. 1831), vol. iii. p. 38. 



308 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

would have served him in fact for the day. He never tasted 
anything more before dinner, and at dinner he ate almost as 
sparingly as Squire Tovell's niece from the boarding-school — 

" Who cut the sanguine flesh in frustums fine, 

And marvelled much to see the creatures dine." 

The only dishes he was at all fond of were the old-fashioned 

ones to which he had been accustomed in the days of Saunders 

Fairf ord ; and which really are excellent dishes, — such, in 

truth, as Scotland borrowed from France before Catherine de 

\ Medicis brought in her Italian virtuosi to revolutionise the 

B jitchen like the court. Of most of these, I believe, he has in 

t%e course of his novels found some opportunity to record his 

es 1 n eem. But, above all, who can forget that his King Jamie, 

aniyxlst the splendours of Whitehall, thinks himself an ill-used 

monarch unless his first course includes cockyleekie? 

It*;, is a fact, which some philosophers may think worth set- 
ting ylown, that Scott's organisation, as to more than one of 
the se uses, was the reverse of exquisite. He had very little of 
what mtusicians call an ear ; his smell was hardly more deli-' 
cate. I have seen him stare about, quite unconscious of the 
cause, wht^n his whole company betrayed their uneasiness a/ r 
the approacl'i f an over-kept haunch of venison; and neither' 
by the nose^ J j>. the palate could he distinguish corked wine' 
from sound. %Iq could never tell Madeira from Sherry ; nay £ 
an Oriental ^iend having sent him a butt of sheeraz, when Iv '■' 
remembered c h e circumstance some time afterwards, and calle " 
for a bottle t h ave Si r John Malcolm's opinion of its qualit^' 
it turned ou 1: that his butler, mistaking the label, had already 
served up h'a-li the binn as sherry. Port he considered a f 



he 



physic : he never willingly swallowed more than one glas 

it, and was sure to anathematise a second, if offered, by re- 1 

peating John Home's epigram — 

"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, 
Old was his mutton, and his claret good ; 
Let him drink port, the English statesman cried — 
He drank the poison, and his spirit died.'" 

In truth, he liked no wines except sparkling champaign and 
claret ; but even as to this last he was no connoisseur ; and 
sincerely preferred a tumbler of whisky-toddy to the most 
precious " liquid ruby " that ever flowed in the cup of a prince. 
He rarely took any other potation when quite alone with his 



SCOTT IN EDINBURGH. 309 

family ; but at the Sunday board he circulated the champaign 
briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret each 
man's fair share afterwards. I should not omit, however, that 
his Bourdeaux was uniformly preceded by a small libation of 
the genuine mountain dew, which he poured with his own 
hand, more majorum, for each guest — making use for the pur- 
pose of such a multifarious collection of ancient Highland 
quaighs (little cups of curiously dovetailed wood, inlaid with 
silver) as no Lowland sideboard but his was ever equipped 
with — but commonly reserving for himself one that was pecul- 
iarly precious in his eyes, as having travelled from Edinburgh 
to Derby in the canteen of Prince Charlie. This relic had been 
presented to " the wandering Ascanius " by some very careful 
follower, for its bottom is of glass, that he who quaffed might 
keep his eye the while upon the dirk hand of his companion. 

The sound of music — (even, I suspect, of any sacred music 
but psalm-singing) — would be considered indecorous in the 
streets of Edinburgh on a Sunday night ; so, upon the occa- 
sions I am speaking of, # the harp was silent, and Otterburne 
and The Bonnie House of Airlie must needs be dispensed 
with. To make amends, after tea in the drawing-room, Scott 
usually read some favourite author for the amusement of his 
little circle ■; or Erskine, Ballantyne, or Terry, did so, at his 
request.' He himself read aloud high poetry with far greater 
simplicity, depth, and effect, than any other man I ever heard ; 
and in Macbeth or Julius Csesar, or the like, I doubt if Kem- 
ble could have been more impressive. Yet the changes of 
intonation were so gently managed, that he contrived to set 
the different interlocutors clearly before us, without the least 
approach to theatrical artifice. Not so the others I have men- 
tioned; they all read cleverly and agreeably, but with the 
decided trickery of stage recitation. To them he usually gave 
the book when it was a comedy, or, indeed, any other drama 
than Shakspeare's or Joanna Baillie's. Dryden's Fables, John- 
son's two Satires, and certain detached scenes of Beaumont 
and Fletcher, especially that in the Lover's Progress, where 
the ghost of the musical innkeeper makes his appearance, 
were frequently selected. Of the poets, his contemporaries, 
however, there was not one that did not come in for his part. 
In Wordsworth, his pet pieces were, I think, the Song for 
Brougham Castle, the Laodamia, and some of the early son- 
nets : — in Southey, Queen Orraca, Fernando Ramirez, the 
Lines on the Holly Tree — and, of his larger poems, the Tha- 
laba. Crabbe was perhaps, next to Shakspeare, the standing 



310 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

resource ; but in those days Byron was pouring out his spirit 
fresh and full ; and, if a new piece from his hand had appeared, 
it was sure to be read by Scott the Sunday evening afterwards, 
and that with such delighted emphasis as shewed how com- 
pletely the elder bard had kept all his enthusiasm for poetry at 
the pitch of youth, all his admiration of genius, free, pure, and 
unstained by the least drop of literary jealousy. Rare and 
beautiful example of a happily constituted and virtuously dis- 
ciplined mind and character ! 

Let me turn, meanwhile, to a table very different from his 
own, at which, from this time forward, I often met Scott. 

James Ballantyne then lived in St. John Street, a row of good, 
old-fashioned, and spacious houses, adjoining the Canongate 
and Holyrood, and at no great distance from his printing es- 
tablishment. He had married a few years before the daughter 
of a wealthy farmer in Berwickshire — a quiet amiable woman, 
of simple manners, and perfectly domestic habits : a group of 
fine young children were growing up about him ; and he 
usually, if not constantly, had under his roof his aged mother, 
his and his wife's tender care of whom it was most pleasing to 
witness. As far as a stranger might judge, there could not be 
a more exemplary household, or a happier one ; and I have 
occasionally met the poet in St. John Street when there were 
no other guests but Erskine, Terry, George Hogarth, 1 and 
another intimate friend or two, and when James Ballantyne 
was content to appear in his own true and best colours, the 
kind head of his family, the respectful but honest schoolfellow 
of Scott, the easy landlord of a plain, comfortable table. But 
when any great event was about to take place in the business, 
especially on the eve of a new novel, there were doings of a 
higher strain in St. John Street ; and to be present at one of 
those scenes was truly a rich treat, even — if not especially — 
for persons who, like myself, had no more knowledge than the 
rest of the world as to the authorship of Waverley. Then 
were congregated about the printer all his own literary allies, 
of whom a considerable number were by no means personally 
familiar with " the great unmown : " — who, by the way, 
owed to him that widely adopted title ; — and He appeared 
among the rest with his usual open aspect of buoyant good- 
humour — although it was not difficult to trace, in the occasional 

1 George Hogarth, Esq. W.S., brother of Mrs. James Ballantyne. This 
gentleman is now well known in the literary world ; especially by a 
History of Music, of which all who understand that science speak highly. 
— 1848. 



DINNERS. 311 

play of his features, the diversion it afforded him to watch all 
the procedure of his swelling confidant, and the curious 
neophytes that surrounded the well-spread board. 

The feast was, to use one of James's own favourite epithets, 
gorgeous; an aldermanic display of turtle and venison, with the 
suitable accompaniments of iced punch, potent ale, and generous 
Madeira. When the cloth was drawn, the burley preses arose, 
with all he could muster of the port of John Kemble, and 
spouted with a sonorous voice the formula of Macbeth — 

" Fill full ! 
I drink to the general joy of the whole table ! " 

This was followed by " The King, God bless him ! " and second 
came — " Gentlemen, there is another toast which never has 
been nor shall be omitted in this house of mine — I give you 
the health of Mr. Walter Scott with three times three ! " — All 
honour having been done to this health, and Scott having 
briefly thanked the company with some expressions of warm 
affection to their host, Mrs. Ballantyne retired ; — the bottles 
passed round twice or thrice in the usual way; — and then 
James rose once more, every vein on his brow distended, his 
eyes solemnly fixed upon vacancy, to propose, not as before in 
his stentorian key, but with " 'bated breath," in the sort of 
whisper by which a stage conspirator thrills the gallery — 
" Gentlemen, a bumper to the immortal Author of Waverley ! " 
— The uproar of cheering, in which Scott made a fashion of 
joining, was succeeded by deep silence, and then Ballantyne 
proceeded — 

" In his Lord-Burleigh look, serene and serious, 
A something of imposing and mysterious " — 

to lament the obscurity in which his illustrious but too modest 
correspondent still chose to conceal himself from the plaudits of 
the world — to thank the company for the manner in which the 
nominis umbra had been received — and to assure them that 
the Author of Waverley won Id, when informed of the circum- 
stance, feel highly delighted — " the proudest hour of his life," 
&c. &c. The cool demure fun of Scott's features during all this 
mummery was perfect; and Erskine's attempt at a gay noncha- 
lance was still more ludicrously meritorious. Aldiborontiphosco- 
phornio, however, bursting as he was, knew too well to allow 
the new novel to be made the subject of discussion. Its name 
was announced, and success to it crowned another cup ; but 



312 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

after that, no more of Jedediah. To cut the thread, he rolled 
out unbidden some one of his many theatrical songs, in a style 
that would have done no dishonour to almost any orchestra — 
The Maid of Lodi — or perhaps, The Bay of Biscay, oh! — or 
The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft. Other toasts fol- 
lowed, interspersed with ditties from other performers ; — old 
George Thomson, the friend of Burns, was ready, for one, with 
The Moorland Wedding, or Willie brew'd a peck o' maut ; — 
and so it went on, until Scott and Erskine, with any clerical 
or very staid personage that had chanced to be admitted, saw 
fit to withdraw. Then the scene was changed. The claret 
and olives made way for broiled bones and a mighty bowl of 
punch ; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had re- 
stored his powers, James opened ore rotundo on the merits of 
the forthcoming romance. " One chapter — one chapter only " 
— was the cry. After " Nay, by'r Lady, nay ! " and a few more 
coy shifts, the proof-sheets were at length produced, and James, 
with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he considered as 
the most striking dialogue they contained. 

The first I heard so read was the interview between Jeanie 
Deans, the Duke of Argyle, and Queen Caroline, in Eichmond 
Park ; and notwithstanding some spice of the pompous tricks 
to which he was addicted, I must say he did the inimitable 
scene great justice. At all events, the effect it produced was 
deep and memorable, and no wonder that the exulting typog- 
rapher's one bumper more to Jedediah Cleishbotham preceded 
his parting stave, which was uniformly The Last Words of 
Marmion, executed certainly with no contemptible rivalry of 
Braham. 

What a different affair was a dinner, although probably in- 
cluding many of the same guests, at the junior partner's ! He 
in those days retained, I think, no private apartments attached 
to his auction-rooms in Hanover Street, over the door of which 
he still kept emblazoned "John Ballantyne and Company, 
Booksellers." At any rate, such of his entertainments as I 
ever saw Scott partake of, were given at his villa near to the 
Frith of Forth, by Trinity ; — a retreat which the little man 
had invested with an air of dainty voluptuous finery, contrast- 
ing strikingly enough with the substantial citizen-like snug- 
ness of his elder brother's domestic appointments. His house 
was surrounded by gardens so contrived as to seem of con- 
siderable extent, having many a shady tuft, trellised alley, and 
mysterious alcove, interspersed among their bright parterres. 
His professional excursions to Paris and Brussels in quest of 



DINNERS. 313 

objects of vertu, had supplied both the temptation and the 
means to set forth the interior in a fashion that might have 
satisfied the most fastidious petite maitresse of Norwood or 
St. Denis. John, too, was a married man : he had, however, 
erected for himself a private wing, the accesses to which, 
whether from the main building or the bosquet, were so nar- 
row that it was physically impossible for the handsome and 
portly lady who bore his name to force her person through any 
one of them. His dinners were in all respects Parisian, for 
his wasted palate disdained such John Bull luxuries as were 
all in all with James. The piquant pasty of Strasburg or 
Perigord was never to seek ; and even the piece de resistance 
was probably a boar's head from Coblentz, or a turkey ready 
stuffed with truffles from the Palais Royal. The pictures scat-, 
tered among John's innumerable mirrors were chiefly of theat- 
rical subjects — many of them portraits of beautiful actresses 
— the same Peg Wofhngtons, Bellamys, Kitty Clives, and so 
forth, that found their way in the sequel to Charles Mathews's 
gallery at Highgate. Here that exquisite comedian's own 
mimicries and parodies were the life and soul of many a festi- 
val, and here, too, he gathered from his facetious host not a 
few of the richest materials for his at homes and monopolylogues. 
But, indeed, whatever actor or singer of eminence visited Edin- 
burgh, of the evenings when he did not perform several were 
sure to be reserved for Trinity. Here Braham quavered, and 
here Liston drolled his best — here Johnstone, and Murray, 
and Yates, mixed jest and stave — here Kean revelled and 
rioted — and here the Roman Kemble often played the Greek 
from sunset to dawn. Nor did the popular danseuse of the 
time disdain to freshen her roses, after a laborious week, 
amidst these Paphian arbours. 

Johnny had other tastes that were equally expensive. He 
had a well-furnished stable, and followed the fox-hounds when- 
ever the covert was within an easy distance. His horses were 
all called after heroes in Scott's poems or novels ; and at this 
time he usually rode' up to his auction on a tall milk-white 
hunter, yclept Old Mortality, attended by a leash or two of 
greyhounds, — Die Vernon, Jenny Dennison, and so forth, by 
name. The featherweight himself appeared uniformly, ham- 
mer-in-hand, in the half-dress of some sporting-club — a light 
grey frock, with emblems of the chase on its silver buttons, 
white cord breeches, and jockey-boots in Meltonian order. 
Yet he affected in the pulpit rather a grave address ; and was 
really one of the most plausible and imposing of the Puff tribe. 



314 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Probably Scott's presence overawed Ms ludicrous propensities ; 
for the poet was, when sales were going on, almost a daily at- 
tendant in Hanover Street, and himself not the least energetic 
of the numerous competitors for Johnny's uncut jifteeners, Vene- 
tian lamps, Milanese cuirasses, and old Dutch cabinets. Maida, 
by the way, was so well aware of his master's habits, that about 
the time when the Court of Session was likely to break up for 
the day, he might usually be seen couched in expectation among 
Johnny's own tail of greyhounds at the threshold of the mart. 
It was at one of those Trinity dinners this summer that I 
first saw Constable. Being struck with his appearance, I asked 
Scott who he was, and he told me — expressing some surprise 
that anybody should have lived a winter or two in Edinburgh 
without knowing, by sight at least, a citizen whose name was 
so familiar to the world. • I happened to say that I had not 
been prepared to find the great bookseller a man of such gen- 
tlemanlike and even distinguished bearing. Scott smiled, and 
answered — " Ay, Constable is indeed a grand-looking chield. 
He puts me in mind of Fielding's apology for Lady Booby — 
to wit, that Joseph Andrews had an air which, to those who 
had not seen many noblemen, would give an idea of nobility." 
I had not in those days been much initiated in the private 
jokes of what is called, by way of excellence, the trade, and was 
puzzled when Scott, in the course of the dinner, said to Con- 
stable, "Will your Czarish Majesty do me the honour to take a 
glass of champaign ? " I asked the master of the feast for an 
explanation. " Oh ! " said he, " are you so green as not to know 
that Constable long since dubbed himself The Czar of Mus- 
covy, John Murray The Emperor of the West, and Longman and 
his string of partners The Divan ? " — " And what title," I 
asked, " has Mr. John Ballantyne himself found in this new 
almanack imperial*!" — "Let that flee stick to thewa'," quotli 
Johnny : " When I set up for a bookseller, The Crafty chris- 
tened me The Dey of Alljeers — but he now considers me as 
next thing to dethroned." He added — "His Majesty the 
autocrat is too fond of these nicknames. One day a partner of 
the house of Longman was dining with him in the country, 
to settle an important piece of business, about which there oc- 
curred a good deal of difficulty. * What fine swans you have in 
your pond there ! ' said the Londoner, by way of parenthesis. — 
4 Swans ! ' cried Constable ; * they are only geese, man. There 
are just five of them, if you please to observe, and their names 
are Longman, Hurst, Bees, Orme, and Brown.' This skit cost 
The Crafty a good bargain." 



DINNERS. 315 

It always appeared to me that James Ballantyne felt his 
genius rebuked in the presence of Constable : his manner was 
constrained, his smile servile, his hilarity elaborate. Not so 
with Johnny : the little fellow never seemed more airily frol- 
icsome than when he capered for the amusement of the Czar. 

When I visited Constable, as I often did at a period some- 
what later than that of which I now speak, and for the most 
part in company with Scott, I found the bookseller established 
in a respectable country gentleman's seat, some six or seven 
miles out of Edinburgh, and doing the honours of it with all 
the ease that might have been looked for had he been the long- 
descended owner of the place ; — there was no foppery, no show, 
no idle luxury, but to all appearance the plain abundance and 
simple enjoyment of hereditary wealth. His conversation was 
manly and vigorous, abounding in Scotch anecdotes of the old 
time, which he told with a degree of spirit and humour only 
second to his great author's. No man could more effectually 
control, when he had a mind, either the extravagant vanity 
which, on too many occasions, made him ridiculous, or the des- 
potic temper which habitually held in fear and trembling all 
such as were in any sort dependent on his Czarish Majesty's 
pleasure. In him I never saw (at this period) anything but 
the unobtrusive sense and the calm coitrtesy of a well-bred 
gentleman. His very equipage kept up the series of contrasts 
between him and the two Ballantynes. Constable went back 
and forward between the town and Polton in a deep hung and 
capacious green barouche, without any pretence at heraldic 
blazonry, drawn by a pair of sleek, black, long-tailed horses, 
and conducted by a grave old coachman in plain blue livery. 
The Printer of the Canongate drove himself and his wife about 
the streets and suburbs in a snug machine, which did not over- 
burthen one powerful and steady cob; — while the gay Auc- 
tioneer, whenever he left the saddle for the box, mounted a 
bright blue dog-cart, and rattled down the Newhaven road with 
two high-mettled steeds prancing tandem before him. 

The Sheriff told with peculiar unction the following anecdote 
of this spark : — The first time he went over to pick up curiosi- 
ties at Paris, it happened that he met, in the course of his 
trafhckings, a certain brother bookseller of Edinburgh, as un- 
like him as one man could well be to another — a grave, dry 
Presbyterian, rigid in all his notions as the buckle of his wig. 
This precise worthy having ascertained John's address, went 
to call on him a day or two afterwards, with the news of some 
richly illuminated missal, which he might possibly be glad to 



316 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

make prize of. On asking for his friend, a smiling laquais de 
place informed him that Monsieur had gone out, but that Ma- 
dame was at home. Not doubting that Mrs. Ballantyne had 
accompanied her husband on his trip, he desired to pay his 
respects to Madame, and was ushered in accordingly. "But 
oh, Mr. Scott ! " said, or rather groaned the austere elder on 
his return from this modern Babylon — "oh. Mr. Scott, there 
was nae Mrs. John yonder, but a painted Jezabel sittin' up in 
her bed, wi' a wheen impudent French limmers like herseP, and 
twa or three whiskered blackguards, takin' their collation o' 
nicknacks and champaign wine. I ran out o' the house as if I 
had been shot. What judgment will this wicked warld come 
to ! The Lord pity us ! " Scott was a severe enough censor 
in the general of such levities, but somehow, in the case of 
B-igdnmfunnidos, he seemed to regard them with much the 
same toleration as the naughty tricks of a monkey in the 
" Jardin des Plantes." 

Why did Scott persist in mixing up all his most important 
concerns with these Ballantynes ? The reader of these pages 
will have all my materials for an answer; but in the meantime 
let it suffice to say, that he was the most patient, long-suffering, 
affectionate, and charitable of mankind; that in the case of 
both the brothers he \iould count, after all, on a sincerely, nay, 
a passionately devoted attachment to his person ; that, with 
the greatest of human beings, use is in all but unconquerable 
power ; and that he who so loftily tossed aside the seemingly 
most dangerous assaults of flattery, the blandishment of dames, 
the condescension of princes, the enthusiasm of crowds — had 
still his weak point, upon which two or three humble besiegers, 
and one unwearied, though most frivolous underminer, well 
knew how to direct their approaches. It was a favourite saw 
of his own, that the wisest of our race often reserve the average 
stock of folly to be all expended upon some one flagrant absur- 
dity. 

I alluded to James Ballantyne's reading of the famous scene 
in Richmond Park. According to Scott's original intention, 
the second series of Jedediah was to have included two tales ; 
but his Jeanie Deans soon grew so on his fancy as to make this 
impossible ; and the Heart of Mid-Lothian alone occupied the 
four volumes which appeared in June 1818, and were at once 
placed by acclamation in the foremost rank of his writings. 
Lady Louisa Stuart's picture of the southern rapture may be 
found elsewhere ; but I must not omit here her own remarks 
on the principal character : — " People were beginning to say 



THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. 317 

the author would wear himself out ; it was going on too long 
in the same key, and no striking notes could possibly be pro- 
duced. On the contrary, I think the interest is stronger here 
than in any of the former ones — (always excepting my first- 
love Waverley) — and one may congratulate you upon having 
effected what many have tried to do, and nobody yet succeeded 
in, making the perfectly good character the most interesting. 
Of late days, especially since it has been the fashion to write 
moral and even religious novels, one might almost say of some 
of the wise good heroines, what a lively girl once said of her 
well-meaning aunt — ' Upon my word she is enough to make 
anybody wicked.' And though beauty and talents are heaped 
on the right side, the writer, in spite of himself, is sure to put 
agreeableness on the wrong ; the person from whose errors he 
means you should take warning, runs away with your secret par- 
tiality in the meantime. Had this very story been conducted 
by a common hand, Effie would have attracted our concern and 
sympathy — Jeanie only cold approbation. Whereas Jeanie, 
without youth, beauty, genius, warm passions, or any other 
novel-perfection, is here our object from beginning to end. 
This is ' enlisting the affections in the cause of virtue ' ten 
times more than ever Richardson did ; for whose male and 
female pedants, all-excelling as they are, I never could care 
half so much as I found myself inclined to do for Jeanie before 
I finished the first volume." 

From the choice of localities, and the splendid blazoning of 
tragical circumstances that had left the strongest impression 
on the memory and imagination of every inhabitant, the recep- 
tion of this tale in Edinburgh was a scene ^of all-engrossing 
enthusiasm, such as I never witnessed there on the appearance 
of any other literary novelty. But the admiration and delight 
were the same all over Scotland. Never before had he seized 
such really noble features of the national character as were 
canonised in the person of his homely heroine : no art had ever 
devised a happier running contrast than that of her and her 
sister, or interwoven a portraiture of lowly manners and sim- 
ple virtues, with more graceful delineations of polished life, or 
with bolder shadows of terror, guilt, crime, remorse, madness, 
and all the agony of the passions. 



CHAPTEE X. 

Sketches of Abbotsford — Illness and Domestic Afflictions — The Bride 
of Lammermoor — The Legend of Montrose — Ivanhoe. 1818-1819. 

The 12th of July [1818] restored Scott as usual to the 
supervision of Ms trees and carpenters; but he had already 
told the Ballantynes, that the story which he had found it 
impossible to include in the recent series should be forthwith 
taken up as the opening one of a third ; and instructed John 
to embrace the first favourable opportunity of offering Con- 
stable the publication of this, on the footing of 10,000 copies 
again forming the first edition; but now at length without 
any more stipulations connected with the "old stock." 

Before he settled himself to his work, however, he made a 
little tour of the favourite description with his wife and chil- 
dren — halting for a few days at Drumlanrig, thence crossing 
the Border to Carlisle and Rokeby, and returning by way of 
Alnwick. On the 17th August, he writes thus to John Bal- 
lantyne from Drumlanrig — " This is heavenly weather, and I 
am making the most of it, as I shall have a laborious autumn 
before me. I may say of my head and fingers as the farmer 
of his mare, when he indulged her with an extra feed — 

' Ye ken that Maggie winna sleep 
For that or Simmer.' 

We have taken our own horses with us, and I have my pony, 
and ride when I find it convenient." 

The following letter to Mr. Morritt of Eokeby, M.P., seems 
to have been among the first he wrote after his return : — 

" Abbotsfokd, 10th Sept. 1818. 

" My dear Morritt, — We have been cruising to and fro 

since we left your land of woods and streams. Lord Melville 

wished me to come and stay two days with him at Melville 

Castle, which has broken in upon my time a little, and inter- 

319 



320 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

rupted my purpose of telling you as how we arrived safe at 
Abbotsford, without a drop of rain, thus completing a tour 
of three weeks in the same fine weather in which we com- 
menced it — a thing which never fell to my lot before. Cap- 
tain Fergusson is inducted into the office of Keeper of the 
Regalia, to the great joy, I think, of all Edinburgh. He has 
entered upon a farm (of eleven acres) in consequence of this 
advancement, for you know it is a general rule, that whenever 
a Scotsman gets his head above water, he immediately turns it 
to land. As he has already taken all the advice of all the 
notables in and about the good village of Darnick, we expect 
to see his farm look like a tailor's book of patterns, a snip of 
every several opinion which he has received occupying its 
appropriate corner. He is truly what the French call un drole 
de corps." 

One of his visitors of September was Mr. R. Cadell, who 
was now «in all the secrets of his father-in-law and partner 
Constable ; and observing how his host was harassed with 
lion-hunters, and what a number of hours he spent daily in 
the company of his work-people, he expressed, during one of 
their walks, his wonder that Scott should ever be able to write 
books at all while in the country. " I know," he said, " that 
you contrive to get a few hours in your own room, and that 
may do for the mere pen-work; but when is it that you 
think ? " — " Oh," said Scott, " I lie simmering over things for 
an hour or so before I get up — and there's the time I am 
dressing to overhaul my half-sleeping, half-waking, projet de 
chapitre — and when I get the paper before me, it commonly 
runs off pretty easily. Besides, I often take a dose in the 
plantations, and while Tom marks out a dyke or a drain, as I 
have directed, one's fancy may be running its ain riggs in some 
other world." 

It was in the month following that I first saw Abbotsford. 
He invited my friend John Wilson (now Professor of Moral 
Philosophy at Edinburgh) and myself to visit him for a day 
or two on our return from an excursion to Mr. Wilson's beauti- 
ful villa on Windermere, but named the particular day (October 
8th) on which it would be most convenient for him to receive 
us ; and we discovered on our arrival, that he had fixed it from 
a good-natured motive. We found him walking at no great 
distance from the house, with five or six young people, and 
his friends Lord Melville and Adam Fergusson. Having pre- 
sented us to the first Lord of the Admiralty, he fell back a 



SKETCHES OF ABBOTSFORD. 321 

little and said " I am glad you came to-day, for I thought it 
might be of use to you both, some time or other, to be known 
to my old school-fellow here, who is, and I hope. will long con- 
tinue to be, the great giver of good things in the Parliament 
House. I trust you have had enough of certain pranks with 
your friend Ebony, and if so, Lord Melville will have too 
much sense to remember them." 1 We then walked round a 
plantation called the Thicket, and came back to the house by 
a formidable work which he was constructing for the defence 
of his haugh against the wintry violences of the Tweed ; and 
he discoursed for some time with keen interest upon the 
comparative merits of different methods of embankment, but 
stopped now and then to give us the advantage of any point 
of view in which his new building on the eminence above 
pleased his eye. It had a fantastic appearance — being but a 
fragment of the existing edifice — and not at all harmonising 
in its outline with the original tenement to the eastward. 
Scott, however, expatiated eon amore on the rapidity with 
which, being chiefly of darkish granite, it was assuming a 
"time-honoured" aspect. Fergusson, with a grave and re- 
spectful look observed, "Yes, it really has much the air of 
some old fastness hard by the river Jordan." This allusion 
to a so-called Chaldee MS., in the manufacture of which Fer- 
gusson fancied Wilson and myself to have had a share, gave 
rise to a burst of laughter among Scott's merry young folks, 
while he himself drew in his nether lip and rebuked the Cap- 
tain with " Toots, Adam ! Toots, Adam ! " He then returned 
to his embankment, and described how a former one had been 
entirely swept away in one night's flood. But the Captain 
was ready with another verse of the Oriental MS., and groaned 
out by way of echo — " Verily my fine gold hath perished ! " 2 
Whereupon the " Great Magician " elevated his huge oaken 
staff as if to lay it on the waggish soldier's back — but flour- 
ished it gaily over his own head, and laughed louder than 
the youngest of the company. As we walked and talked, the 
Pepper and Mustard terriers kept snuffing about among the 
bushes and heather near us, and started every five minutes a 
hare, which scudded away before them and the ponderous 
stag-hound Maida — the Sheriff and all his tail hollowing and 

1 Ebony was Mr. Blackwood's own usual designation in the jeux cV esprit 
of his young Magazine, in many of which the persons thus addressed by 
Scott were conjoint culprits. They both were then, as may be inferred, 
sweeping the boards of the Parliament House as "briefless barristers." 

2 See Blackwood for October 1817. 



322 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

cheering in perfect confidence that the dogs could do no more 
harm to poor puss than the venerable tom-cat, Hinse of Hins- 
feldt, who pursued the vain chase with the rest. 

At length we drew near Peterhouse, and found sober Peter 
himself, and his brother-in-law the facetious factotum Tom 
Purdie, superintending, pipe in mouth, three or four sturdy 
labourers busy in laying clown the turf for a bowling-green. 
" I have planted hollies all round it, you see," said Scott, " and 
laid out an arbour on the right-hand side for the laird; and 
here I mean to have a game at bowls after dinner every day 
in fine weather — for I take that to have been among the m- 
dispensables of our old vie cle chateau" But I must not forget 
the reason he gave me some time afterwards for having fixed 
on that spot for his bowling-green. " In truth," he then said, 
" I wished to have a smooth walk and a canny seat for myself 
within ear-shot of Peter's evening psalm." The coachman 
was a devout Presbyterian, and many a time have I in after 
years accompanied Scott on his evening stroll, when the prin- 
cipal object was to enjoy, from the bowling-green, the unfail- 
ing melody of this good man's family- worship — and heard 
him repeat, as Peter's manly voice led the humble choir within, 
that beautiful stanza of Burns's Saturday Night : — 

"They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; 
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim," &c. 

It was near the dinner-hour before we reached the house, and 
presently I saw assembled a larger company than I should 
have fancied to be at all compatible with the existing accom- 
modations of the place ; but it turned out that Adam Pergusson, 
and the friends whom I have not as yet mentioned, were to 
find quarters elsewhere for the night. His younger brother, 
Captain John Pergusson of the Royal Navy (a favourite lieu- 
tenant of Lord Nelson's), had come over from Huntley Burn; 
there were present also, Mr. Scott of Gala, whose residence is 
within an easy distance ; Sir Henry Hay Macdougal of Mack- 
erston, an old baronet, with gay, lively, and highly polished 
manners, related in the same degree to both Gala and the 
Sheriff; Sir Alexander Don, the member for Roxburghshire, 
whose elegant social qualities have been alluded to in a preced- 
ing chapter ; and Dr. Scott of Darnlee, a modest and intelligent 
gentleman who, having realised a fortune in the East India 
Company's medical service, had settled within two or three 
miles of Abbotsford, and, though no longer practising his pro- 



SKETCHES OF ABBOTSFORD. 323 

fession, had kindly employed all the resources of his skill in 
the endeavour to counteract his neighbour's recent liability to 
attacks of cramp. Our host and one or two others appeared, 
as was in those days a common fashion with country gentle- 
men, in the lieutenancy uniform of their county. How fourteen 
or fifteen people contrived to be seated in the then dining-room 
of Abbotsf orcl I know not — for it seemed quite full enough 
when it contained only eight or ten ; but so it was — nor, as 
Sir Harry Macdougal's fat valet, warned by former experience, 
did not join the train of attendants, was there any perceptible 
difficulty in the detail of the arrangements. Everything about 
the dinner was, as the phrase runs, in excellent style ; and in 
particular the potage a la Meg Merrilees, announced as an at- 
tempt to imitate a device of the Duke of Buccleuch's celebrated 
cook — by name Monsieur Florence — seemed, to those at least 
who were better acquainted with the Kaim of Derncleugh than 
with the cuisine of Bowhill, 1 a very laudable specimen of the 
art. The champaign circulated nimbly — and I never was 
present at a gayer dinner. It had advanced a little' beyond the 
soup when it received an accompaniment which would not, per- 
haps, have improved the satisfaction of southern guests, had 
any such been present. A tall and stalwart bagpiper, in com- 
plete Highland costume, appeared pacing to and fro on the 
green before the house, and the window being open, it seemed 
as if he might as well have been straining his lungs within the 
parlour. At a pause of his strenuous performance, Scott took 
occasion to explain, that John of Skye was a recent acquisition 
to the rising hamlet of Abbotstown ; that the man was a capi- 
tal hedger and ditcher, and only figured with the pipe and 
philabeg on high occasions in the after part of the day ; " but 
indeed," he added, laughing, " I fear John will soon be discov- 
ering that the hook and mattock are unfavourable to his 
chanter hand." When the cloth was drawn, and the never- 
failing salver of quaighs introduced, John Bruce, upon some 
well-known signal, entered the room, but en militaire, without 
removing his bonnet, and taking his station behind the land- 
lord, received from his hand the largest of the Celtic bickers 
brimful of Glenlivet. The man saluted the company in his 
own dialect, tipped off the contents (probably a quarter of an 
English pint of raw aquavitae) at a gulp, wheeled about as sol- 
emnly as if the whole ceremony had been a movement on parade, 

1 1 understand that this now celebrated soup was extemporised by 
M. Florence on Scott's first visit to Bowhill after the publication of Guy 

Mannering. 



324 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

and forthwith recommenced his pibroch s and gatherings, which 
continued until long after the ladies had left the table, and 
the autumnal moon was streaming in upon us so brightly as 
to dim the candles. 

I had never before seen Scott in such buoyant spirits as he 
shewed this evening — and I never saw him in higher after- 
wards ; and no wonder, for this was the first time that he, 
Lord Melville, and Adam Fergusson, daily companions at the 
High School of Edinburgh, and partners in many joyous scenes 
of the early volunteer period, had met since the commencement 
of what I may call the serious part of any of their lives. The 
great poet and novelist was receiving them under his own roof, 
when his fame was at its acme, and his fortune seemed culmi- 
nating to about a corresponding height — and the generous ex- 
uberance of his hilarity might have overflowed without moving 
the spleen of a Cynic. Old stories of the Yards and the Cross- 
causeway were relieved by sketches of real warfare, such as 
none but Fergusson (or Charles Mathews, had he been a sol- 
dier) could ever have given ; and they toasted the memory of 
Greenbreeks and the health of the Beau with equal devotion. 

When we rose from table, Scott proposed that we should all 
ascend his western turret, to enjoy a moonlight view of the 
valley. The younger part of his company were too happy to 
do so : some of the seniors, who had tried the thing before, 
found pretexts for hanging back. The stairs were dark, nar- 
row, and steep ; but the Sheriff piloted the way, and at length 
there were as many on the top as it could well afford footing 
for. Nothing could be more lovely than the panorama ; all 
the harsher and more naked features being lost in the delicious 
moonlight ; the Tweed and the Gala winding and sparkling be- 
neath our feet ; and the distant ruins of Melrose appearing, as 
if carved of alabaster, under the black mass of the Eildons. 
The poet, leaning on his battlement, seemed to hang over the 
beautiful vision as if he had never seen it before. " If I live," 
he exclaimed, " I will build me a higher tower, with a more 
spacious platform, and a staircase better fitted for an old fel- 
low's scrambling." The piper was heard retiming his instru- 
ment below, and he called to him for Lochaber no more. John 
of Skye obeyed, and as the music rose, softened by the dis- 
tance, Scott repeated in a low key the melancholy words of the 
song of exile. 

On descending from the tower, the whole company were 
assembled in the new dining-room, which was still under the 
hands of the carpenters, but had been brilliantly illuminated 



SKETCHES OF ABBOTSFOBD. 325 

for the occasion. Mr. Bruce took his station, and old and 
young danced reels to his melodious accompaniment until they 
were weary, while Scott and the Dominie looked on with glad- 
some faces, and beat time now and then, the one with his staff, 
the other with his wooden leg. A tray with mulled wine and 
whisky punch was then introduced, and Lord Melville pro- 
posed a bumper, with all the honours, to the Roof-tree. Captain 
Fergusson having sung Johnnie Cope, called on the young 
ladies for Kenmure's on and awa' ; and our host then insisted 
that the whole party should join, standing in a circle hand-in- 
hand more majorum, in the hearty chorus of 

" Weel may we a' be, 
111 may we never see, 
God bless the king and the gude companie! " 

— which being duly performed, all dispersed. Such was the 
handsel — (for Scott protested against its being considered as 
the househeating) — of the new Abbotsford. 

Awakening between six and seven next morning, I heard 
the Sheriff's voice close to me, and looking out of the little 
latticed windoAv of the then detached cottage called the Chapel, 
saw him and Tom Purdie pacing together on the green be- 
fore the door, in earnest deliberation over what seemed to 
be a rude daub of a drawing ; and every time they approached 
my end of their parade, I was sure to catch the words Blue 
Bank. It turned out in the course of the day, that a field of 
clay near Toftfield went by this name, and that the draining 
of it was one of the chief operations then in hand. My friend 
Wilson, meanwhile, who lodged also in the chapel, tapped 
also at the door, and asked me to rise and take a walk with 
him by the river, for he had some angling project in his head. 
He went out and joined in the consultation about the Blue 
Bank, while I was dressing ; presently Scott hailed me at the 
casement, and said he had observed a volume of a new edition 
of G-oethe on my table — would I lend it him for a little ? He 
carried off the volume accordingly, and retreated with it to his 
den. It contained the Faust, and I believe in a more complete 
shape than he had before seen that masterpiece of his old fa- 
vourite. "When we met at breakfast, a couple of hours after, 
he was full of the poem — dwelt with enthusiasm on the airy 
beauty of its lyrics, the terrible pathos of the scene before the 
Mater Dolorosa, and the deep skill shewn in the various subtle 
shadings of character between Mephistopheles and poor Marga- 
ret. He remarked, however, of the Introduction (which I suspect 



326 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

was new to him), that blood would out — that, consummate 
artist as he was, Goethe was a German, and that nobody but 
a German would ever have provoked a comparison with the 
book of Job, " the grandest poem that ever was written." He 
added, that he suspected the end of the story had been left 
in obscuro, from despair to match the closing scene of our own 
Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Mr. Wilson mentioned a report 
that Coleridge was engaged on a translation of the Faust. " I 
hope it is so," said Scott : " Coleridge made Schiller's Wallen- 
stein far finer than he found it, and so he will do by this. No 
man has all the resources of poetry in such profusion, but 
he cannot manage them so as to bring out anything of 
his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius. He 
is like a lump of coal rich with gas, which lies expending 
itself in puffs and gleams, unless some shrewd body will clap 
it into a cast-iron box, and compel the compressed element to 
do itself justice. His fancy and diction would have long ago 
placed him above all his contemporaries, had they been under 
the direction of a sound judgment and a steady will. I don't 
now expect a great original poem from Coleridge, but he might 
easily make a sort of fame for himself as a poetical translator, 
that would be a thing completely unique and sui generis." 

While this criticism proceeded, Scott was cutting away at 
his brown loaf and a plate of kippered salmon, in a style 
which strongly reminded me of Dandie Dinmont's luncheon 
at Mump's Hall ; nor was his German topic at all the pre- 
dominant one. On the contrary, the sentences which have 
dwelt on my memory dropt from him now and then, in the 
pauses, as it were, of his main talk ; — for though he could 
not help recurring, ever and anon, to the subject, it would 
have been quite out of his way to make any literary matter 
the chief theme of his conversation, when there was a single 
person present who was not likely to feel much interested 
in its discussion. — How often have I heard him quote on 
such occasions, Mr. Vellum's advice to the butler in Addison's 
excellent play of The Drummer — "Your conjuror, John, is 
indeed a twofold personage — but he eats and dririks like other 
people ! " 

Before breakfast was over the post-bag arrived, and its 
contents were so numerous, that Lord Melville asked Scott 
what election was on hand — not doubting that there must 
be some very particular reason for such a shoal of letters. 
He answered that it was much the same most days, and 
added, " though no one has kinder friends in the franking 



SKETCHES OF ABBOTSFOBB. 327 

line, and though Freeling and Croker especially 1 are always 
ready to stretch the point of privilege in my favour, I am 
nevertheless a fair contributor to the revenue, for I think 
my bill for letters seldom comes under L.150 a-year ; and as 
to coach-parcels, they are a perfect ruination." He then 
told with high merriment a disaster that had lately befallen 
him. " One morning last spring," he said, " I opened a huge 
lump of a despatch, without looking how it was addressed, 
never doubting that it had travelled under some omnipotent 
frank like the First Lord of the Admiralty's, when, lo and 
behold, the contents proved to be a MS. play, by a young lady 
of New York, who kindly requested me to read and correct it, 
equip it with prologue and epilogue, procure for it a favourable 
reception from the manager of Drury Lane, and make Murray or 
Constable bleed handsomely for the copyright ; and on inspect- 
ing the cover, I found that I had been charged five pounds 
odd for the postage. This was bad enough, but there was 
no help, so I groaned and submitted. A fortnight or so after, 
another packet, of not less formidable bulk, arrived, and I was 
absent enough to break its seal too without examination. Con- 
ceive my horror when out jumped the same identical tragedy 
of The Cherokee Lovers, with a second epistle from the author- 
ess, stating that, as the winds had been boisterous, she feared 
the vessel intrusted with her former communication might 
have foundered, and therefore judged it prudent to forward 
a duplicate." 

Scott said he must retire to answer his letters, but that the 
sociable and the ponies would be at the door by one o'clock, 
when he proposed to shew Melrose and Dryburgh to Lady 
Melville and any of the rest of the party that chose to accom- 
pany them ; adding that his son Walter would lead anybody 
who preferred a gun to the likeliest place for a black-cock, 
and that Charlie Purdie (Tom's brother) would attend on Mr. 
Wilson, and whoever else chose to try a cast of the salmon-rod. 
He withdrew when all this was arranged, and appeared at the 
time appointed, with perhaps a dozen letters sealed for the 
post, and a coach parcel addressed to James Ballantyne, which 
he dropt at the turnpike-gate as we drove to Melrose. Seeing 
it picked up by a dirty urchin, and carried into a hedge pot- 
house, where half-a-dozen nondescript wayfarers were smoking 
and tippling, I could not but wonder that it had not been the 

1 Scott's excellent friend Sir Thomas Freeling was Secretary of the 
Post-Office for a long series of years : Mr. Croker was Secretary of the 
Admiralty from 1809 to 1827. 



328 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

fate of some one of those innumerable packets to fall into 
unscrupulous hands, and betray the grand secret. That very 
morning we had seen two post-chaises drawn up at his gate, 
and the enthusiastic travellers, seemingly decent tradesmen and 
their families, who must have been packed in a manner worthy 
of Mrs. Gilpin, lounging * about to catch a glimpse of him at 
his going forth. But it was impossible in those days to pass 
between Melrose and Abbotsf ord without encountering some odd 
figure, armed with a sketch-book, evidently bent on a peep at 
the Great Unknown ; and it must be allowed that many of these 
pedestrians looked as if they might have thought it very 
excusable to make prize, by hook or by crook, of a MS. chapter 
of the Tales of my Landlord. 

Scott shewed us the ruins of Melrose in detail ; and as we 
proceeded to Dryburgh, descanted learnedly and sagaciously 
on the good effects which must have attended the erection of 
so many great monastic establishments in a district so pecul- 
iarly exposed to the inroads of the English in the days of the 
Border wars. " They were now and then violated," he said, " as 
their aspect to this hour bears witness ; but for once that they 
suffered, any lay property similarly situated must have been har- 
ried a dozen times. The bold Dacres, Liddells, and Howards, 
that could get easy absolution at York or Durham for any ordi- 
nary breach of a truce with the Scots, would have had to dree 
a heavy dole had they confessed plundering from the fat broth- 
ers, of the same order perhaps, whose lines had fallen to them 
on the wrong side of the Cheviot." He enlarged too on the 
heavy penalty which the Crown of Scotland had paid for its 
rash acquiescence in the wholesale robbery of the Church at 
the Reformation. "The proportion of the soil in the hands 
of the clergy had," he said, "been very great — too great to 
be continued. If we may judge by their share in the public 
burdens, they must have had nearly a third of the land in 
their possession. But this vast wealth was now distributed 
among a turbulent nobility, too powerful before; and the 
Stuarts soon found, that in the bishops and lord abbots they 
had lost the only means of balancing their factions, so as to 
turn the scale in favour of law and order ; and by and by the 
haughty barons themselves, who had scrambled for the worldly 
spoil of the church, found that the spiritual influence had 
been concentrated in hands as haughty as their own, and 
connected with no feelings likely to buttress their order any 
more than the Crown — a new and sterner monkery, under a 
different name, and essentially plebeian. Presently the Scotch 



SKETCHES OF ABBOT SFOBD. 329 

were on the verge of republicanism, in state as well as kirk, 
and I have sometimes thought it was only the accession of 
King Jamie to the throne of England that could have given 
monarchy a chance of prolonging its existence here." One of 
his friends asked what he supposed might have been the annual 
revenue of the abbey of Melrose in its best day. He answered, 
that he suspected, if all the sources of their income were now 
in clever hands, the produce could hardly be under L.100,000 
a-year : and added — " Making every allowance for modern 
improvements, there can be no question that the sixty brothers 
of Melrose divided a princely rental. The superiors were of- 
ten men of very high birth, and the great majority of the rest 
were younger brothers of gentlemen's families. I fancy they 
may have been, on the whole, pretty near akin to your Fellows 
of All Souls — who, according to their statute, must be bene 
nati, bene vestiti, et mediocriter docti. They had a good house 
in Edinburgh, where, no doubt, my lord abbot and his chap- 
lains maintained a hospitable table during the sittings of Par- 
liament." Some one regretted that we had no lively picture 
of the enormous revolution in manners that must have followed 
the downfall of the ancient Church of Scotland. He observed 
that there were, he fancied, materials enough for constructing 
such a one, but that they were mostly scattered in records — 
" of which," said he, " who knows anything to the purpose 
except Tom Thomson and John Riddell ? It is common to 
laugh at such researches, but they pay the good brains that 
meddle with them ; — and had Thomson been as diligent in 
setting down his discoveries as he has been in making them, 
he might, long before this time of day, have placed himself on a 
level with Ducange or Camden. The change in the country- 
side," he continued, " must indeed have been terrific ; but it 
does not seem to have been felt very severely by a certain 
Boniface of St. Andrews, for when somebody asked him, on 
the subsidence of the storm, what he thought of all that had 
occurred, — ' Why,' answered mine host, ' it comes to this, that 
the moderator sits in my meikle chair, where the dean sat 
before, and in place of calling for the third stoup of Bordeaux, 
bids Jenny bring ben anither bowl of toddy.' " 

At Dryburgh Scott pointed out to us the sepulchral aisle of 
his Haliburton ancestors, and said he hoped, in God's appointed 
time, to lay his bones among their dust. The spot was, even 
then, a sufficiently interesting and impressive one ; but I shall 
not say more of it at present. 

On returning to Abbotsford, we found Mrs. Scott and her 



330 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

daughters doing penance under the merciless curiosity of a 
couple of tourists who had arrived from Selkirk soon after we 
set out for Melrose. They were rich specimens — tall, lanky 
young men, both of them rigged out in new jackets and trou- 
sers of the Macgregor tartan ; the one, as they had revealed, 
being a lawyer, the other a Unitarian preacher, from New Eng- 
land. These gentlemen, when told on their arrival that Mr. 
Scott was not at home, had shewn such signs of impatience, 
that the servant took it for granted they must have serious 
business, and asked if they would wish to speak a word with 
his lady. They grasped at this, and so conducted themselves 
in the interview, that Mrs. Scott never doubted they had 
brought letters of introduction to her husband, and invited 
them accordingly to partake of her luncheon. They had been 
walking about the house and grounds with her and her daugh- 
ters ever since that time, and appeared at the porch, when the 
Sheriff and his party returned to dinner, as if they had been 
already fairly enrolled on his visiting list. For the moment, 
he too was taken in — he fancied that his wife must have re- 
ceived and opened their credentials — and shook hands with 
them with courteous cordiality. But Mrs. Scott, with all her 
overflowing good-nature, was a sharp observer ; and she, before 
a minute had elapsed, interrupted the ecstatic compliments of 
the strangers, by reminding them that her husband would be 
glad to have the letters of the friends who had been so good 
as to write by them. It then turned out that there were no 
letters to be produced — and Scott, signifying that his hour for 
dinner approached, added, that as he supposed they meant to 
walk to Melrose, he could not trespass further on their time. 
The two lion-hunters seemed quite unprepared for this abrupt 
escape. But there was about Scott, in perfection, when he 
chose to exert it, the power of civil repulsion ; he bowed the 
overwhelmed originals to his door, and on re-entering the par- 
lour, found Mrs. Scott complaining very indignantly that they 
had gone so far as to pull out their note-book, and beg an exact 
account, not only of his age — but of her own. Scott, already 
half relenting, laughed heartily at this misery. He observed, 
however, that "if he were to take in all the world, he had 
better put up a sign-post at once, — 

' Porter, ale, and British spirits, 
Painted bright between twa trees ; ' 1 

and that no traveller of respectability could ever be at a loss 

1 Macneill's Will and Jean. 



SKETCHES OF ABBOTSFORD. 331 

for such an introduction as would ensure his best hospitality." 
Still he was not quite pleased with what had happened — and 
as we were about to pass, half an hour afterwards, from the 
drawing-room to the dining-room, he said to his wife, " Hang 
the Yahoos, Charlotte — but we should have bid them stay 
dinner." " Devil a bit," quoth Captain John Fergusson, who 
had again come over from Huntley Burn, and had been latterly 
assisting the lady to amuse her Americans — " Devil a bit, my 
dear, — they were quite in a mistake, I could see. The one 
asked Madame whether she deigned to call her new house Tul- 
lyveolan or Tillietudlem ; and the other, when Maida happened 
to lay his nose against the window, exclaimed pro-di-gi-ous ! In 
short, they evidently meant all the humbug not for you, but for 
the culprit of Waverley, and the rest of that there rubbish." 
" Well, well, Skipper," was the reply, — " for a' that, the loons 
would hae been nane the waur o' their kail." 

From this banter it may be inferred that the younger Fer- 
gusson had not as yet been told the Waverley secret — which to 
any of that house could never have been any mystery. Prob- 
ably this, or some similar occasion soon afterwards, led to his 
formal initiation ; for during the many subsequent years that 
the veil was kept on, I used to admire the tact with which, 
when in their topmost high-jinks humour, both " Captain John" 
and " The Auld Captain " eschewed any the most distant allu- 
sion to the affair. 

And this reminds me, that at the period of which I am writ- 
ing, none of Scott's own family, except of course his wife, had 
the advantage in that matter of the skipper. Some of them, too, 
were apt, like him, so long as no regular confidence had been 
reposed in them, to avail themselves of the author's reserve for 
their own sport among friends. Thus, one morning, just as Scott 
was opening the door of the parlour, the rest of the party being 
already seated at the breakfast-table, the Dominie was in the 
act of helping himself to an egg, marked with a peculiar hiero- 
glyphic by Mrs. Thomas Purdie, upon which Anne Scott, then 
a lively rattling girl of sixteen, lisped out, " That's a mysteri- 
ous looking egg, Mr. Thomson — what if it should have been 
meant for the Great Unknown f " Ere the Dominie could re- 
ply, her father advanced to the foot of the table, and having 
seated himself and deposited his stick on the carpet beside him, 
with a sort of whispered whistle, " What's that Lady Anne's 1 
saying?" quoth he; "I thought that it had been well known 

1 When playing in childhood with the young ladies of the Buccleuch 
family, she had been overheard saying to her namesake Lady Anne Scott, 



332 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

that the keelavined egg must be a soft one for the Slierra ?" 
And so he took his egg, and while all smiled in silence, poor 
Anne said gaily, in the midst of her blushes, " Upon my word, 
papa, I thought Mr. John Ballantyne might have been ex- 
pected." This allusion to Johnny's glory in being considered 
as the accredited representative of Jedediah Cleishbotham, 
produced a laugh — at which the Sheriff frowned — and then 
laughed too. 

I remember nothing particular about our second day's din- 
ner, except that it was then I first met my dear and honoured 
friend William Laidlaw. The evening passed rather more 
quietly than the preceding one. Instead of the dance in the 
new dining-room, we had a succession of old ballads sung to the 
harp and guitar by the young ladies of the house ; and Scott, 
when they seemed to have done enough, found some reason 
for taking down a volume of Crabbe, and read us one of his 
favourite tales — 

" Grave Jonas Kindred, Sibyl Kindred's sire, 
Was six feet high, and looked six inches higher," &c. 

But jollity revived in full vigour when the supper-tray was in- 
troduced, and to cap all merriment, Adam Fergusson dismissed 
us with the Laird of Cockpen. Lord and Lady Melville were 
to return to Melville Castle next morning, and Mr. Wilson and 
I happened to mention that we were engaged to dine and sleep 
at the seat of my friend and relation Mr. Pringle of Torwood- 
lee, on our way to Edinburgh. Scott immediately said that he 
would send word in the morning to the Laird, that he and Fer- 
gusson meant to accompany us — such being the unceremoni- 
ous style in which country neighbours in Scotland visit each 
other. Next day, accordingly, we all rode over together to 
the "distant Tomcoodlee" of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, dis- 
tant not above five or six miles from Abbotsford — coursing 
hares as we proceeded, but inspecting the antiquities of the 
Catrail to the interruption of our sport. We had another 
joyous evening at Torwoodlee. Scott and Fergusson returned 
home at night, and the morning after, as Wilson and I mounted 
for Edinburgh, our kind old host, his sides still sore with laugh- 
ter, remarked that " the Sheriff and the Captain together were 
too much for any company." 

Towards the end of this year Scott received from Lord Sid- 

" Well, I do wish I were Lady Anne too — it is so much prettier than 
Miss ; " thenceforth she was commonly addressed in the family by the 
coveted title. 



SKETCHES OE ABBOTSFORD. 333 

mouth the formal announcement of the Prince Eegent's desire 
(which had been privately communicated some months earlier 
through the Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam) to confer on him 
the rank of Baronet. When he first heard of the Eegent's 
intention, he signified considerable hesitation ; for it had not 
escaped his observation that such airy sounds, however mod- 
estly people may be disposed to estimate them, are apt to 
entail in the upshot additional cost upon their way of living, 
and to affect accordingly the plastic fancies, feelings, and habits 
of their children. But Lord Sidmouth's letter happened to 
reach him a few months after he had heard of the sudden 
death of Charles Carpenter, who had bequeathed the reversion 
of his fortune to his sister's family : and this circumstance dis- 
posed Scott to waive his scruples, chiefly with a view to the 
professional advantage of his eldest son, who had by this time 
fixed on the life of a soldier. As is usually the case, the esti- 
mate of Mr. Carpenter's property transmitted on his death to 
England proved to have been an exaggerated one ; and at any 
rate no one of Scott's children lived to receive any benefit from 
the bequest. But it was thus he wrote at the time to Morritt : 
— " It would be easy saying a parcel of fine things about my 
contempt of rank, and so forth ; but although I would not have 
gone a step out of my way to have asked, or bought, or begged, 
or borrowed a distinction, which to me personally will rather 
be inconvenient than otherwise, yet, coming as it does directly 
from the source of feudal honours, and as an honour, I am 
really gratified with it ; — especially as it is intimated, that it is 
his Royal Highness's pleasure to heat the oven for me expressly, 
without waiting till he has some new batch of Baronets ready 
in dough. My poor friend Carpenter's bequest to my family has 
taken away a certain degree of impecuniosity , a necessity of sav- 
ing cheese-parings and candle-ends, which always looks incon- 
sistent with any little pretension to rank. But as things now 
stand, Advance banners in the name of God and St. Andrew ! 
Remember, I anticipate the jest, ' I like not such grinning 
honours as Sir Walter hath.' x After all, if one must speak 
for themselves, I have my quarters and emblazonments, free 
of all stain but Border theft, and High Treason, which I hope 
are gentlemanlike crimes ; and I hope Sir Walter Scott will 
not sound worse than Sir Humphry Davy, though my merits 
are as much under his, in point of utility, as can well be 
imagined. But a name is something, and mine is the better 
of the two." 

1 Sir Walter Blunt— 1st King Henry IV., Act V. Scene 3. 



334 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

His health, prevented him from going up to the fountain of 
honour for more than a year. Meantime his building and other 
operations continued to tax his resources more than he had cal- 
culated upon ; and he now completed an important negotiation 
with Constable, who agreed to give him bonds for L. 12,000 in 
consideration of all his existing copyrights ; namely, whatever 
shares had been reserved to him in the earlier poems, and the 
whole property in his novels down to the third series of Tales 
of my Landlord inclusive. The deed included a clause by which 
Constable was to forfeit L.2000 if he ever " divulged the name 
of the Author of Waverley during the life of the said Walter 
Scott, Esq." It is perhaps hardly worth mentioning, that about 
this date a London bookseller announced certain volumes of 
Grub-Street manufacture, as " A Xew Series of the Tales of my 
Landlord; " and when John Ballantyne, as the "agent for the 
author of Waverley," published a declaration that the volumes 
thus advertised were not from that writer's pen, met John's 
declaration by an audacious rejoinder — impeaching his author- 
ity, and asserting that nothing but the personal appearance in 
the field of the gentleman for whom Ballantyne pretended to act, 
could shake his belief that he was himself in the confidence of 
the true Simon Pure. Hereupon the dropping of Scott's mask 
seems to have been pronounced advisable by both Ballantyne 
and Constable. But he calmly replied, " The Author who lends 
himself to such a trick must be a blockhead — let them pub- 
lish, and that will serve our purpose better than anything we 
ourselves could do." I have forgotten the names of the "tales," 
which, being published accordingly, fell still-born from the press. 

During the winter he appears to have made little progress 
with the third series included in this negotiation; — his painful 
seizures of cramp were again recurring frequently, and he prob- 
ably thought it better to allow the novels to lie over until his 
health should be re-established. In the meantime he drew up 
a set of topographical and historical essays, which originally 
appeared in the successive numbers of the splendidly illustrated 
work, entitled Provincial Antiquities of Scotland. 1 But he did 
this merely to gratify his own love of the subject, and because, 
well or ill, he must be doing something. He declined all pe- 
cuniary recompense ; but afterwards, when the success of the 
publication was secure, accepted from the proprietors some of 
the beautiful drawings by Turner, Thomson, and other artists, 
which had been prepared to accompany his text. He also wrote 

1 These charming essays are now included in his Miscellaneous Prose 
Works, 



ILLNESS. 335 

that winter his article on the Drama for the Encyclopaedia Sup- 
plement, and the reviewal of the fourth canto of Childe Harold 
for the Quarterly. 

On the loth of February 1819, he witnessed the first repre- 
sentation, on the Edinburgh boards, of the most meritorious 
and successful of all the Terry fie ations, though Terry himself 
was not the manufacturer. The drama of Rob Roy will never 
again be got up so well in all its parts, as it then was by William 
Murray's Company ; the manager's own Captain Thornton was 
excellent — and so was the Dugald Creature of a Mr. Duff — 
there was also a goo&Mattie — (about whose equipment, by the 
by, Scott felt such interest that he left his box between the acts 
to remind Mr. Murray that she " must have a mantle with her 
lanthorn;") — but the great- and unrivalled attraction was the 
personification of Bailie Jarvie, by Charles Mackay, who, being 
himself a native of Glasgow, entered into the minutest pecul- 
iarities of the character with high gusto, and gave the west- 
country dialect in its most racy perfection. It was extremely 
diverting to watch the play of Scott's features during this 
admirable realisation of his conception ; and I must add, that 
the behaviour of the Edinburgh audience on all such occasions, 
while the secret of the novels was preserved, reflected great 
honour on their good taste and delicacy of feeling. He seldom, 
in those days, entered his box without receiving some mark of 
general respect and admiration ; but I never heard of any pre- 
text being laid hold of to connect these demonstrations with the 
piece he had come to witness, or, in short, to do or say anything 
likely to interrupt his quiet enjoyment of the evening in the 
midst of his family and friends. 

This Rob Roy had a continued run of forty-one nights ; and 
when the Bailie's benefit-night arrived, he received an epistle 
of kind congratulation signed Jedecliah Cleishbotham, and en- 
closing a five-pound note: but all the while, Scott was in a 
miserable state, and when he left Edinburgh, in March, the 
alarm about him in the Parliament House was very serious. 
He had invited me to visit him in the country during the recess ; 
but I should not have ventured to keep my promise, had not 
the Ballantynes reported amendment towards the close of April. 
John then told me that his "illustrious friend" (for so both 
the brothers usually spoke of him) was so much recovered as to 
have resumed his usual literary tasks, though with this differ- 
ence, that he now, for the first time in his life, found it neces- 
sary to employ the hand of another. 

He had now begun in earnest his Bride of Lammermoor, and 



336 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

his amanuenses were William Laidlaw arid John Ballantyne ; 

— of whom he preferred the latter, when he could be at Abbots- 
ford, on account of the superior rapidity of his pen; and also 
because John kept his pen to the paper without interruption, 
and, though with many an arch twinkle in his eyes, and now 
and then an audible smack of his lips, had resolution to work 
on like a well-trained clerk ; whereas good Laidlaw entered 
with such keen zest into the interest of the story as it flowed 
from the author's lips, that he could not suppress exclamations 
of surprise and delight — " Gude keep us a' ! — the like o' that ! 

— eh sirs ! eh sirs ! " — and so forth — which did not promote 
despatch. I have often, however, in the sequel, heard both 
these secretaries describe the astonishment with which they 
were equally affected when Scott began this experiment. The 
affectionate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating, when his 
audible suffering filled every pause, "Xay, Willie," he answered, 
" only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the 
cry as well as all the wool to ourselves ; but as to giving over 
work, that can only be when I am in woollen." John Ballan- 
tyne told me, that after the first day, he always took care to 
have a dozen of pens made before he seated himself opposite 
to the sofa on which Scott lay, and that though he often turned 
himself on his pillow with a groan of torment, he usually con- 
tinued the sentence in the same breath. But when dialogue of 
peculiar animation was in progress, spirit seemed to triumph 
altogether over matter — he arose from his couch and walked 
up and down the room, raising and lowering his voice, and as it 
were acting the parts. It was in this fashion that Scott pro- 
duced the far greater portion of The Bride of Lammermoor — 
the whole of the Legend of Montrose — and almost the whole 
of Ivanhoe. Yet when his health was fairly re-established, he 
disdained to avail himself of the power of dictation, which he 
had thus put to the sharpest test, but resumed, and for many 
years resolutely adhered to, the old plan of writing everything 
with his own hand. When I once, some time afterwards, ex- 
pressed my surprise that he did not consult his ease, and spare 
his eye-sight at all events, by occasionally dictating, he an- 
swered — " I should as soon think of getting into a sedan-chair 
while I can use my legs." 

But to return : — I rode out to Abbotsf ord with John Ballan- 
tyne towards the end of the spring vacation, and though he 
had warned me of a sad change in Scott's appearance, it was 
far beyond what I had been led to anticipate. He had lost a 
great deal of flesh — his clothes hung loose about him — his 



ILLNESS. 337 

countenance was meagre, haggard, and of trie deadliest yellow 
of the jaundice — and his hair, which a few weeks before had 
been but slightly sprinkled with grey, was now almost literally 
snow-white. His eye, however, retained its fire unquenched ; 
indeed it seemed to have gained in brilliancy from the new lan- 
guor of the other features ; and he received us with all the 
usual cordiality, and even with little perceptible diminishment 
in the sprightliness of his manner. He sat at the table while 
we dined, but partook only of some rice pudding ; and after the 
cloth was drawn, while sipping his toast and water, pushed 
round the bottle in his old style, and talked with easy cheerful- 
ness of the stout battle he had fought, and which he now seemed 
to consider as won. 

"One day there was," he said, "when I certainly began to 
have great doubts whether the mischief was not getting at my 
mind — and I'll tell you how I tried to reassure myself on that 
score. I was quite unfit for anything like original composition ; 
but I thought if I could turn an old German ballad I had been 
reading into decent rhymes, I might dismiss my worst appre- 
hensions — and you shall see what became of the experiment." 
He then desired his daughter Sophia to fetch the MS. of The 
Noble Morringer, as it had been taken down from his dictation, 
partly by her and partly by Mr. Laidlaw, during one long and 
painful day while he lay in bed. He read it to us as it stood, 
and seeing that both Ballantyne and I were much pleased with 
the verses, he said he should copy them over, — make them a 
little " tighter about the joints," — and give them to the Regis- 
ter for 1816. 

The reading of this long ballad, however, — (it consists of 
forty-three stanzas) 1 — seemed to have exhausted him : he re- 
tired to his bed-room ; and an hour or two after, when we were 
about to follow his example, his family were distressed by the 
well-known symptoms of another sharp recurrence of his af- 
fliction. A large dose of opium and the hot bath were immedi- 
ately put in requisition. His good neighbour, Dr. Scott of 
Darnlee, was sent for, and soon attended; and in the course 
of three or four hours we learned that he was once more at 
ease. But I can never forget the groans which, during that 
space, his agony extorted from him. Well knowing the iron 
strength of his resolution, to find him confessing its extremity, 
by cries audible not only all over the house, but even to a con- 
siderable distance from it — it may be supposed that this was 
sufficiently alarming, even to my companion ; how much more 

1 See Scott's Poetical Works, royal 8vo, p. 618. 
z 



338 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

to me, who had never before listened to that voice, except in 
the gentle accents of kindness and merriment. 

I told Ballantyne that I saw this was no time for my visit, 
and that I should start for Edinburgh again at an early hour 
— and begged he would make my apologies — in the propriety 
of which he acquiesced. But as I was dressing, about seven 
next morning, Scott himself tapped at my door, and entered, 
looking better I thought than at my arrival the day before. 
" Don't think of going," said he ; "I feel hearty this morning, 
and if my devil does come back again, it won't be for three 
days at any rate. For the present, I want nothing to set me 
up except a good trot in the open air, to drive away the ac- 
cursed vapours of the laudanum I was obliged to swallow last 
night. You have never seen Yarrow, and when I have finished 
a little job I have with Jocund Johnny, we shall all take horse 
and make a day of it." When I said something about a ride of 
twenty miles being rather a bold experiment after such a night, 
he answered, that he had ridden more than forty, a week before, 
under similar circumstances, and felt nothing the worse. He 
added, that there was an election on foot, in consequence of 
the death of Sir John Riddell of Eiddell, Member of Parlia- 
ment for the Selkirk district of Burghs, and that the bad 
health and absence of the Duke of Buccleuch rendered it quite 
necessary that he should make exertions on this occasion. " In 
short," said he, laughing, " I have an errand which I shall per- 
form — and as I must pass Newark, you had- better not miss 
the opportunity of seeing it under so excellent a cicerone as 
the old minstrel, 

' Whose withered cheek and tresses grey 
Shall yet see many a better day.' " 

About eleven o'clock, accordingly, he was mounted, by the 
help of Tom Purdie, upon a staunch active cob, yclept Sibyl 
Grey, — exactly such a creature as is described in Mr. Din- 
mont's Dumple — while Ballantyne sprung into the saddle of 
noble Old Mortality, and we proceeded to the town of Selkirk, 
where Scott halted to do business at the Sheriff-Clerk's, and 
begged us to move onward at a gentle pace until he should 
overtake us. He came up by and by at a canter, and seemed 
in high glee with the tidings he had heard about the canvass. 
And so we rode by Philiphaugh, Carterhaugh, Bowhill, and 
Newark, he pouring out all the way his picturesque anecdotes 
of former times — more especially of the fatal field where 
Montrose was finally overthrown by Leslie. He described 



BIDES ACEOSS COUNTRY. 339 

the battle as vividly as if he had witnessed it ; the passing of 
the Ettrick at daybreak by the Covenanting General's heavy 
cuirassiers, many of them old soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus, 
and the wild confusion of the Highland host when exposed to 
their charge on an extensive haugh as flat as a bowling-green. 
He drew us aside at Slain-men's-lee, to observe the green mound 
that marks the resting-place of the slaughtered royalists ; and 
pointing to the apparently precipitous mountain, Minchmoor, 
over which Montrose and his few cavaliers escaped, mentioned, 
that, rough as it seemed, his mother remembered passing it in 
her early days in a coach and six, on her way to a ball at 
Peebles — several footmen marching on either side of the car- 
riage to prop it up, or drag it through bogs, as the case might 
require. He also gave us, with all the dramatic effect of one 
of his best chapters, the history of a worthy family who, in- 
habiting at the time of the battle a cottage on his own estate, 
had treated with particular kindness a young officer of Leslie's 
army quartered on them for a night or two before. When 
parting from them to join the troops, he took out a purse of 
gold, and told the goodwoman that he had a presentiment he 
should not see another sun set, and in that case would wish 
his money to remain in her kind hands ; but, if he should sur- 
vive, he had no doubt she would restore it honestly. The 
young man returned mortally wounded, but lingered a while 
under her roof, and finally bequeathed to her and hers his 
purse and his blessing. " Such," he said, " was the origin of 

the respectable lairds of , now my good neighbours." 

The prime object of this expedition was to talk over the pol- 
itics of Selkirk with one of the Duke of Buccleuch's great store 
farmers, who, as the Sheriff had learned, possessed private in- 
fluence with a doubtful bailie or deacon among the Souters. I 
forget the result, if ever I heard it. But next morning, having, 
as he assured us, enjoyed a good night in consequence of this 
ride, he invited us to accompany him on a similar errand across 
Bowden Moor, and up the Valley of the Ayle ; and when we 
reached a particular bleak and dreary point of that journey, he 
informed us that he perceived in the waste below a wreath of 
smoke, which was the appointed signal that a wavering Souter 
of some consequence had agreed to give him a personal inter- 
view where no Whiggish eyes were likely to observe them ; — 
and so, leaving us on the road, he proceeded to thread his way 
westwards, across moor and bog, until we lost view of him. I 
think a couple of hours might have passed before he joined us 
again, which was, as had been arranged, not far from the vil- 



840 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

lage of Lilliesleaf. In that place, too, he had some negotia- 
tion of the same sort to look after ; and when he had finished 
it, he rode with us all round the ancient woods of Riddell, but 
would not go near the house ; I suppose lest any of the afflicted 
family might still be there. Many were his lamentations over 
the catastrophe which had just befallen them. " They are," 
he said, " one of the most venerable races in the south of Scot- 
land — they were here long before these glens had ever heard 
the name of Soulis or Douglas — to say nothing of Buccleuch : 
they can shew a Pope's bull of the tenth century, authorising 
the then Riddell to marry a relation within the forbidden de- 
grees. Here they have been for a thousand years at least ; 
and now all the inheritance is to pass away, merely because 
one good worthy gentleman would not be contented to enjoy 
his horses, his hounds, and his bottle of claret, like thirty or 
forty predecessors, but must needs turn scientific agriculturist, 
take almost all his fair estate into his own hand, superintend 
for himself perhaps a hundred ploughs, and try every new 
nostrum that has been tabled by the quackish improvers of the 
time. And what makes the thing ten times more wonderful 
is, that he kept day-book and ledger, and all the rest of it, as 
accurately as if he had been a cheesemonger in the Grass- 
market." Some of the most remarkable circumstances in 
Scott's own subsequent life have made me often recall this con- 
versation — with more wonder than he expressed about the 
ruin of the Riddells. 

I remember he told us a world of stories, some tragical, 
some comical, about the old lairds of this time-honoured line- 
age ; and among others, that of the seven Bibles and the seven 
bottles of ale, which he afterwards inserted in a note to a novel 
then in progress. 1 He was also full of anecdotes about a friend 
of his father's, a minister of Lilliesleaf, who reigned for two 
generations the most popular preacher in Teviotdale ; but I 
forget the orator's name. When the original of Saunders Fair- 
ford congratulated him in his latter days on the undiminished 
authority he still maintained — every kirk in the neighbourhood 
being left empty when it was known he was to mount the 
tent at any country sacrament — the shrewd divine answered, 
" Indeed, Mr. Walter, I sometimes think it's vera surprising. 
There's aye a talk of this or that wonderfully gifted young 
man frae the college ; but whenever I'm to be at the same occar 
sion with ony o' them, I e'en mount the white horse in the 
Revelations, and he dings them a'." 

1 See The Bride of Lammermoor, Note to cliap. xiv. 



RIDES ACEOSS COUNTRY. 341 

Thus Scott amused himself and us as we jogged home- 
wards : and it was the same the following day, when (no 
election matters pressing) he rode with us to the western 
peak of the Eildon hills, that he might shew me the whole 
panorama of his Teviotdale, and expound the direction of the 
various passes by which the ancient forayers made their way 
into England, and tell the names and the histories of many a 
monastic chapel and baronial peel, now mouldering in glens 
and dingles that escape the eye of the traveller on the high- 
ways. Among other objects on which he descanted with par- 
ticular interest, were the ruins of the earliest residence of 
the Kerrs of Cessford, so often opposed in arms to his own 
chieftains of Branksome, and a desolate little kirk on the 
adjoining moor, where the Dukes of Roxburghe are still 
buried in the same vault Avith the hero who fell at Turn- 
again. Turning to the northward, he shewed us the crags 
and tower of Smailholme, and behind it the shattered fragment 
of Ercildoune — and repeated some pretty stanzas ascribed to 
the last of the real wandering minstrels of this district, by 
name Burn : — 

" Sing Ercildoune, and Cowdenknowes, 
Where Holmes had ance commanding," &c. 

That night he had again an attack of his cramp, but not 
so serious as the former. Next morning he was again at work 
with Ballantyne at an early hour ; and when I parted from 
him after breakfast, he spoke cheerfully of being soon in 
Edinburgh for the usual business of his Court. I left him, 
however, with dark prognostications ; and the circumstances 
of this little visit to Abbotsford have no doubt dwelt on 
my mind the more distinctly, from my having observed and 
listened to him throughout under the painful feeling that it 
might very probably be my last. 

Within a few days he heard tidings, perhaps as heavy as 
ever reached him. His ever steadfast friend, to whom he 
looked up, moreover, with the feelings of the true old Bor- 
der clansman, Charles Duke of Buccleuch, died on the 20th 
of April at Lisbon. Captain Adam Fergusson had accompa- 
nied the Duke, whose health had for years been breaking, to 
the scene of his own old campaigns : he now attended his 
Grace's remains to England ; and on landing received a letter, 
in which Scott said : — "I have had another eight days' visit 
of my disorder, which has confined me chiefly to my bed. It 
will perhaps shade off into a mild chronic complaint — if it 



342 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

returns frequently with the same violence, I shall break up by 
degrees, and follow my dear chief. I thank God I can look at 
this possibility without much anxiety, and without a shadow 
of fear." 

On the 11th of May he returned to Edinburgh, and was 
present at the opening of the Court ; when all who saw him 
were as much struck as I had been at Abbotsford with the 
change in his appearance. He was unable to persist in attend- 
ance at the Clerks' table — for several weeks afterwards I 
think he seldom if ever attempted it ; and I well remember 
that 7 when the Bride of Lammermoor and Legend of Montrose 
at length came out (which was on the 10th of June), he was 
known to be confined to bed, and the book was received amidst 
the deep general impression that we should see no more of 
that parentage. 

" The Bride of Lammermoor" (says James Ballantyne) "was 
not only written, but published before Mr. Scott was able to 
rise from his bed ; and he assured me that when it was first 
put into his hands in a complete shape, he did not recollect 
one single incident, character, or conversation it contained. 
He did not desire me to understand, nor did I understand, 
that his illness had erased from his memory the original inci- 
dents of the story, with which he had been acquainted from 
his boyhood. These remained rooted where they had ever 
been ; or, to speak more explicitly, he remembered the general 
facts of the existence of the father and mother, of the son and 
daughter, of the rival lovers, of the compulsory marriage, and 
the attack made by the bride upon the hapless bridegroom, 
with the general catastrophe of the whole. All these things 
he recollected just as he did before he took to his bed : but he 
literally recollected nothing else — not a single character woven 
by the romancer, not one of the many scenes and points of 
humour, nor anything with which he was connected as the 
writer of the work. ' For a long time,' he said, ' I felt myself 
very uneasy.in the course of my reading, lest I should be startled 
by meeting something altogether glaring and fantastic. How- 
ever, I recollected that you had been the printer, and I felt 
sure that you would not have permitted anything of this sort 
to pass.' 'Well,' I said, 'upon the whole, how did you like 
it ? ' — ' Why,' he said, ' as a whole, I felt it monstrous gross 
and grotesque ; but still the worst of it made me laugh, and 
I trusted the good-natured public would not be less indulgent.' 
I do not think I ever ventured to lead to the discussion of 
this singular phenomenon again ; but you may depend upon it, 



THE BBIJDE OF LAMMEBMOOB. 343 

that what I have now said is as distinctly reported as if it had 
been taken down in short-hand at the moment ; I believe yon 
will agree with me in thinking that the history of the hnman 
mind contains nothing more wonderful." 

One day, soon after he reappeared in the Parliament House, 
he asked me to walk home with him. He moved languidly, 
and said, if he were to stay in town many days, he must send 
for Sibyl Grey ; but his conversation was heart-whole ; and, in 
particular, he laughed till, despite his weakness, the stick was 
flourishing in his hand, over the following almost incredible 
specimen of the eleventh Earl of Buchan. 

Hearing one morning shortly before this time, that Scott was 
actually in extremis, the Earl proceeded to Castle Street, and 
found the knocker tied up. He then descended to the door in 
the area, and was there received by honest Peter Mathieson, 
whose face seemed to confirm the woful tidings, for in truth his 
master was ill enough. Peter told his Lordship that he had 
the strictest orders to admit no visitor; but the Earl would 
take no denial, pushed the bashful coachman aside, and 
elbowed his way upstairs to the door of Scott's bedchamber. 
He had his fingers upon the handle before Peter could give 
warning to Miss Scott ; and when she appeared to remonstrate 
against such an intrusion, he patted her on the head like a 
child, and persisted in his purpose of entering the sick-room 
so strenuously, that the young lady found it necessary to bid 
Peter see the Earl downstairs again, at whatever damage to 
his dignity. Peter accordingly, after trying all his eloquence 
in vain, gave the tottering, bustling, old, meddlesome coxcomb 
a single shove, — as respectful, doubt not, as a shove can ever 
be, — and he accepted that hint, and made a rapid exit. Scott, 
meanwhile, had heard the confusion, and at length it was 
explained to him ; when, fearing that Peter's gripe might have 
injured Lord Buchan's feeble person, he desired James Bal- 
lantyne, who had been sitting by his bed, to follow the old 
man home — make him comprehend, if he could, that the 
family were in such bewilderment of alarm that the ordinary 
rules of civility were out of the question — and, in fine, in- 
quire what had been the object of his Lordship's intended 
visit. James proceeded forthwith to the Earl's house in 
George Street, and found him strutting about his library in 
a towering indignation. Ballantyne's elaborate demonstrations 
of respect, however, by degrees softened him, and he con- 
descended to explain himself. " I wished," said he, " to em- 
brace Walter Scott before he died, and inform him that I had 



344 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

long considered it as a satisfactory circumstance that he and I 
were destined to rest together in the same place of sepulchre. 
The principal thing, however, was to relieve his mind as to the 
arrangements of his funeral — to shew him a plan which I had 
prepared for the procession — and, in a word, to assure him 
that I took upon myself the whole conduct of the ceremonial at 
Dry burgh." He then exhibited to Ballantyne a formal pro- 
gramme, in which, as may be supposed, the predominant feature 
was not Walter Scott, but David Earl of Buchan. It had been 
settled, inter alia, that the said Earl was to pronounce an eulo- 
gium over the grave, after the fashion of French Academicians 
in the Pere la Chaise. 

And this was the elder brother of Thomas and Henry Erskine ! 
But the story is well known of his boasting one day to the late 
Duchess of Gordon of the extraordinary talents of his family — 
when her unscrupulous Grace asked him, very coolly, whether 
the wit had not come by the mother, and been all settled on 
the younger branches ? 

I must not forget to set down what Sophia Scott afterwards 
told me of her father's conduct upon one night in June, when 
he really did despair of himself. He then called his children 
about his bed, and took leave of them with solemn tenderness. 
After giving them, one by one, such advice as suited their 
years and characters, he added, — " For myself, my dears, I am 
unconscious of ever having done any man an injury, or omitted 
any fair opportunity of doing any man a benefit. I well know 
that no human life can appear otherwise than weak and filthy 
in the eyes of God : but I rely on the merits and intercession 
of our Redeemer." He then laid his hands on their heads, 
and said — " God bless you ! Live so that you may all hope to 
meet each other in a better place hereafter. And now leave 
me, that I may turn my face to the wall." They obeyed him-, 
but he presently fell into a deep sleep ; and when he awoke 
from it after many hours, the crisis of extreme danger was felt 
by himself, and pronounced by his physician, to have been 
overcome. 

The Tales of the Third Series would have been read with 
indulgence, had they needed it ; for the painful circumstances 
under which they must have been produced were in part 
known wherever an English newspaper made its way ; but 1 
believe that, except in typical errors, from the author's inability 
to correct proof-sheets, no one ever affected to perceive in either 
work the slightest symptom of his malady. Dugald Dalgetty 
was placed by acclamation in the same rank with Bailie Jarvie 



PARTING WITH HIS SON. 345 

— a conception equally new, just, and humorous, and worked 
out in all the details, as if it had formed the luxurious enter- 
tainment of a chair as easy as was ever shaken by Rabelais ; 
and though the character of Montrose himself seemed hardly 
to have been treated so fully as the subject merited, the ac- 
customed rapidity of the novelist's execution would have been 
enough to account for any such defect. Caleb Balderstone — 
(the hero of one of the many ludicrous delineations which he 
owed to the late Lord Haddington) — was pronounced at the time, 
by more than one critic, a mere caricature ; and, though he him- 
self would never, in after days, admit this censure to be just, he 
allowed that " he might have sprinkled rather too much parsley 
over his chicken." But even that blemish, for I grant that I 
think it a serious one, could not disturb the profound interest 
and pathos of the Bride of Lammermoor — to my fancy the 
most pure and powerful of all the tragedies that Scott ever 
penned. 

These volumes, as was mentioned, came out before the 
middle of June ; and though at that moment he was unable 
to quit his room, he did not hesitate to make all arrangements 
as to another romance. Nay, though his condition still required 
an amanuensis, he had advanced considerably in the new work 
before the Session closed in July. That he felt much more 
security as to his health by that time, must be inferred from 
his then allowing his son Walter to proceed to Ireland to join 
the 18th regiment of Hussars. The Cornet was only in the 
eighteenth year of his age; and the fashion of education in 
Scotland is such, that he had scarcely ever slept a night under 
a different roof from his parents, until this separation occurred. 
He had been treated from his cradle with all the indulgence 
that a man of sense can ever permit himself to shew to any of 
his children ; and for several years he had now been his father's 
daily companion in all his out-of-doors occupations and amuse- 
ments. The parting was a painful one : but Scott's ambition 
centred in the heir of his name, and instead of fruitless pinings 
and lamentings, he henceforth made it his constant business to 
keep up such a frank correspondence with the young man as 
might enable himself to exert over him, when at a distance, the 
gentle influence of kindness, experience, and wisdoni. The 
series of his letters to his son is, in my opinion, by far the 
most interesting and valuable, as respects the personal character 
and temper of the writer. His manly kindness to his boy, 
whether he is expressing approbation or censure of his conduct, 
is a model for the parent; and his practical wisdom was of 



346 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

that liberal order, based on such comprehensive views of man 
and the world, that I am persuaded it will often be found avail- 
able to the circumstances of their own various cases, by young 
men of whatever station or profession. 

Abbotsf ord had, in the ensuing autumn, the honour of a visit 
from Prince Leopold, now King of Belgium, who had been 
often in Scott's company in Paris in 1815 ; and his Eoyal 
Highness was followed by many other distinguished guests j 
none of whom, from what they saw, would have doubted that 
the masons and foresters fully occupied their host's time. He 
was all the while, however, making steady progress with his 
Ivanhoe — and that although he was so far from entire re- 
covery, that Mr. Laidlaw continued to produce most of the MS. 
from his dictation. 

The approach of winter brought a very alarming aspect of 
things in our manufacturing districts ; and there was through- 
out Scotland a general revival of the old volunteer spirit. Scott 
did not now dream of rejoining the Light Horse of Edinburgh, 
which he took much pleasure in seeing reorganised ; but in 
conjunction with his neighbour the laird of Gala, he planned 
the raising of a body of Border Sharpshooters, and was highly 
gratified by the readiness with which a hundred young men 
from his own immediate neighbourhood sent in their names, 
making no condition but that the Sheriff himself should be the 
commandant. He was very willing to accept that stipulation ; 
and Laidlaw was instantly directed to look out for a stalwart 
charger, a fit successor for the Brown Adams of former days. 
But the progress of disaffection was arrested before this scheme 
could be carried into execution. It was in the midst of that 
alarm that he put forth the brief, but beautiful series of papers 
entitled The Visionary. 

In December he had an extraordinary accumulation of dis- 
tress in his family circle. Within ten days he lost his uncle 
Dr. Kutherf ord ; his dear aunt Christian Rutherford ; and his 
excellent mother. On her death he says to Lady Louisa Stuart 
(who had seen and been much pleased with the old lady) : — 
" If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting 
the past times, it is very much from the studies with which 
she presented me. She connected a long period of time with 
the present generation, for she remembered, and had often 
spoken with, a person who perfectly recollected the battle of 
Dunbar, and Oliver Cromwell's subsequent entry into Edin- 
burgh. She preserved her faculties to the very day before her 
final illness ; for our friends Mr. and Mrs. Scott of Harden 



DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS. 347 

visited her on the Sunday, and, coming to our house after, were 
expressing their surprise at the alertness of her mind, and the 
pleasure which she had in talking over both ancient and 
modern events. She had told them with great accuracy the 
real story of the Bride of Lammermuir, and pointed out 
wherein it differed from the novel. She had all the names of 
the parties, and detailed (for she was a great genealogist) their 
connexion with existing families. On the subsequent Monday 
she was struck with a paralytic affection, suffered little, and 
that with the utmost patience ; and what was God's reward, 
and a great one to her innocent and benevolent life, she never 
knew that her brother and sister, the last thirty years younger 
than herself, had trodden the dark path before her. She was 
a strict economist, which she said enabled her to be liberal ; 
out of her little income of about L.300 a year, she bestowed at 
least a third in well-chosen charities, and with the rest lived 
like a gentlewoman, and even with hospitality more general 
than seemed to suit her age ; yet I could never prevail on her 
to accept of any assistance. You cannot conceive how affect- 
ing it was to me to see the little preparation of presents which 
she had assorted for the New Year — for she was a great ob- 
server of the old fashions of her period — and to think that the 
kind heart was cold which delighted in all these acts of kindly 
affection." 

There is in the library at Abbotsford a fine copy of Basker- 
ville's folio Bible, two volumes, printed at Cambridge in 1763 ; 
and there appears on the blank leaf, in the trembling hand- 
writing of Scott's mother, this inscription — " To my dear son, 
Walter Scott, from his affectionate Mother, Anne Rutherford — 
January 1st, 1819." Under these words her son has written 
as follows : — " This Bible was the gift of my grandfather Dr. 
John Rutherford, to my mother, and presented by her to me ; 
being alas ! the last gift which I was to receive from that ex- 
cellent parent, and, as I verily believe, the thing which she 
most loved in the world, — not only in humble veneration of 
the sacred contents, but as the dearest pledge of her father's 
affection to her. As such she gave it to me ; and as such I be- 
queath it to those who may represent me — charging them 
carefully to preserve the same, in memory of those to whom it 
has belonged. 1820." 

On the 18th of December, while his house was thus saddened, 
appeared his Ivanhoe. It was received throughout England 
with a more clamorous delight than any of the Scotch novels 
had been. The volumes (three in number) were now, for the 



348 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

first time, of the post 8vo form, with a finer paper than hith- 
erto, the press-work much more elegant, and the price accord- 
ingly raised from eight shillings the volume to ten ; yet the 
copies sold in this original shape were twelve thousand. 

I ought to have mentioned sooner, that the original inten- 
tion was to bring out Ivanhoe as the production of a new hand, 
and that to assist this impression, the work was printed in a 
size and manner unlike the preceding ones ; but Constable, 
when the day of publication approached, remonstrated against 
this experiment, and it was accordingly abandoned. 

The reader has already been told that Scott dictated the 
greater part of this romance. The portion of the MS. which 
is his own, appears, however, not only as well and firmly exe- 
cuted as that of any of the Tales of my Landlord, but distin- 
guished by having still fewer erasures and interlineations, and 
also by being in a smaller hand. The fragment is beautiful to 
look at — many pages together without one alteration. It is, 
I suppose, superfluous to add, that in no instance did Scott re- 
write his prose before sending it to the press. Whatever may 
have been the case with his poetry, the world uniformly re- 
ceived the prima cura of the novelist. 

As a work of art, Ivanhoe is perhaps the first of all Scott's 
efforts, whether in prose or in verse ; nor have the strength 
and splendour of his imagination been displayed to higher ad- 
vantage than in some of the scenes of this romance. But I 
believe that no reader who is capable of thoroughly compre- 
hending the author's Scotch character and Scotch dialogue will 
ever place even Ivanhoe, as a work of genius, on the same level 
with Waverley, Guy Mannering, or the Heart of Mid-Lothian. 

The introduction of the charming Jewess and her father 
originated, I find, in a conversation that Scott held with his 
friend Skene during the severest season of his bodily suffer- 
ings in the early part of this year. " Mr. Skene," says that 
gentleman's wife, " sitting by his bedside, and trying to amuse 
him as well as he could in the intervals of pain, happened to 
get on the subject of the Jews, as he had observed them when 
he spent some time in Germany in his youth. Their situation 
had naturally made a strong impression ; for in those days they 
retained their own dress and manners entire, and were treated 
with considerable austerity by their Christian neighbours, being 
still locked up at night in their own quarter by great gates ; 
and Mr. Skene, partly in seriousness, but partly from the mere 
wish to turn his mind at the moment upon something that might 
occupy and divert it, suggested that a group of Jews would be an 



IV AN HOE. 349 

interesting feature if he could contrive to bring them into his 
next novel." Upon the appearance of Ivanhoe, he reminded 
Mr. Skene of this conversation, and said, " You will find this 
book owes not a little to your German reminiscences." 

By the way, before Ivanhoe made its appearance, I had my- 
self been formally admitted to the author's secret ; but had he 
favoured me with no such confidence, it would have been im- 
possible for me to doubt that I had been present some months 
before at the conversation which suggested, and indeed supplied 
all the materials of, one of its most amusing chapters. I allude 
to that in which our Saxon terms for animals in the field, and 
our Norman equivalents for them as they appear on the table, 
and so on, are explained and commented on. All this Scott 
owed to the after-dinner talk one day in Castle Street of his 
old friend Mr. William Clerk, — who, among other elegant pur- 
suits, has cultivated the science of philology very deeply. 

I cannot conclude without observing that the publication of 
Ivanhoe marks the most brilliant epoch in Scott's history as 
the literary favourite of his contemporaries. With the novel 
which he next put forth, the immediate sale of these works 
began gradually to decline ; and though, even when that had 
reached its lowest declension, it was still far above the most 
ambitious dreams of any other novelist, yet the publishers were 
afraid the announcement of anything like a falling-off might 
cast a damp over the spirits of the author. He was allowed to 
remain for several years under the impression that whatever 
novel he threw off commanded at once the old triumphant sale 
of ten or twelve thousand, and was afterwards, when included 
in the collective edition, to be circulated in that shape also as 
widely as Waverley or Ivanhoe. In my opinion, it would have 
been very unwise in the booksellers to give Scott any unfavour- 
able tidings upon such subjects after the commencement of the 
malady which proved fatal to him, — for that from the first 
shook his mind ; but I think they took a false measure of the 
man when they hesitated to tell him exactly how the matter 
stood, throughout 1820 and the three or four following years, 
when his intellect was as vigorous as it ever had been, and his 
heart as courageous ; and I regret their scruples (among other 
reasons), because the years now mentioned were the most costly 
ones in his life ; and for every twelve months in which any 
man allows himself, or is encouraged by others, to proceed in a 
course of unwise expenditure, it becomes proportionably more 
difficult for him to pull up when the mistake is at length de- 
tected or recognised. 



350 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

. In the correspondence of this winter [1819-1820], there 
occurs frequent mention of the Prince Gustavus Vasa, who 
spent some months in Edinburgh, and his Royal Highness's 
accomplished attendant, the Baron Polier. I met them often 
in Castle Street, and remember as especially interesting the 
first evening that they dined there. The only portrait in Scott's 
Edinburgh dining-room was one of Charles XII. of Sweden, and 
he was struck, as indeed every one must have been, with the 
remarkable resemblance which the exiled Prince's air and feat- 
ures presented to the hero of his race. Young G-ustavus, on his 
part, hung with keen and melancholy enthusiasm on his host's 
anecdotes of the expedition of Charles Edward. The Prince, 
accompanied by Scott and myself, witnessed the ceremonial 
of the proclamation of King George IV. on the 2d of February, 
at the Cross, from a window over Mr. Constable's shop in the 
High Street ; and on that occasion also the air of sadness that 
mixed in his features with eager curiosity was very affecting. 
Scott explained all the details to him, not without many lamen- 
tations over the barbarity of the Auld Eeekie bailies, who 
had removed the beautiful Gothic Cross itself, for the sake of 
widening the thoroughfare. The weather was fine, the sun 
shone bright ; and the antique tabards of the heralds, the trum- 
pet notes of God save the King, and the hearty cheerings of 
the immense uncovered multitude that filled the noble old street, 
produced altogether a scene of great splendour and solemnity. 
The Royal Exile surveyed it with a flushed cheek and a watery 
eye, and Scott, observing his emotion, withdrew with me to 
another window, whispering " poor lad ! poor lad ! God help 
him." Later in the season the Prince spent a few days at 
Abbotsford, where he was received with at least as much 
reverence as any eldest son of a reigning sovereign could have 
been. He gave Scott, at parting, a seal, which he almost con- 
stantly used ever after. 

About the middle of February — it having been ere that time 
arranged that I should marry his eldest daughter in the course 
of the spring, — I accompanied him and part of his family on 
one of those flying visits to Abbotsford, with which he often 
indulged himself on a Saturday during term. Upon such occa- 
sions Scott appeared at the usual hour in Court, but wearing, 
instead of the official suit of black, his country morning dress 
— green jacket and so forth — under the clerk's gown ; a licence 
of which many gentlemen of the long robe had been accustomed 
to avail themselves in the days of his youth — it being then 
considered as the authentic badge that they were lairds as well 



GUSTAVUS VASA. 351 

as lawyers — but which, to use the dialect of the place, had 
fallen iuto desuetude before I knew the Parliament House. 
He was, I think, one of the two or three, or at most the half- 
dozen, who still adhered to this privilege of their order ; and it 
has now, in all likelihood, become quite obsolete, like the an- 
cient custom, a part of the same system, for all Scotch barristers 
to appear without gowns or wigs, and in coloured clothes, when 
upon circuit. At noon, when the Court broke up, Peter Mathie- 
son was sure to be in attendance in the Parliament Close, and five 
minutes after, the gown had been tossed off, and Scott, rubbing 
his hands for glee, was under weigh for Tweedside. On this occa- 
sion, he was, of course, in mourning ; but I have thought it worth 
while to preserve the circumstance of his usual Saturday's cos- 
tume. As we proceeded, he talked without reserve of the novel 
of The Monastery, of which he had the first volume with him : 
and mentioned, what he had probably forgotten when he wrote 
the Introduction of 1830, that a good deal of that volume had 
been composed before he concluded Ivanhoe. " It was a relief," 
he said, " to interlay the scenery most familiar to me, with the 
strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagination." 
Next morning there appeared at breakfast John Ballantyne, 
who had at this time a hunting-box a few miles off, in the vale 
of the Leader — and with him Mr. Constable, his guest ; and it 
being a fine clear day, as soon as Scott had read the Church 
service and one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons, we all sallied out, 
before noon, on a perambulation of his upland territories ; Maida 
and the rest of the favourites accompanying our march. At 
starting we were joined by the constant henchman, Tom Purdie 
— and I may save myself the trouble of any attempt to describe 
his appearance, for his master has given us an inimitably true 
one^in introducing a certain personage of his Redgauntlet : — 
" He was, perhaps, sixty years old ; yet his brow was not much 
furrowed, and his jet black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, 
by the advance of age. All his motions spoke strength una- 
bated ; and though rather undersized, he had very broad shoul- 
ders, was square made, thin-flanked, and apparently combined 
in his frame muscular strength and activity ; the last somewhat 
impaired, perhaps, by years, but the first remaining in full 
vigour. A hard and harsh countenance ; eyes far sunk under 
projecting eyebrows, which were grizzled like his hair ; a wide 
mouth, furnished from ear to ear with a range of unimpaired 
teeth of uncommon whiteness, and a size and breadth which 
might have become the jaws of an ogre, completed this delight- 
ful portrait." Equip this figure in Scott's cast-off green jacket, 



352 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

white hat and drab trousers ; and imagine that years of kind 
treatment, comfort, and the honest consequence of a confiden- 
tial grieve, had softened away much of the hardness and harsh- 
ness originally impressed on the visage by anxious penury and 
the sinister habits of a black-fisher; — and the Tom Purdie of 
1820 stands before us. 1 

We were all delighted to see how completely Scott had 
recovered his bodily vigour, and none more so than Con- 
stable, who, as he puffed and panted after him up one ravine 
and down another, often stopped to wipe his forehead, and 
remarked that " it was not every author who should lead him 
such a dance." But Purdie's face shone with rapture as he 
observed how severely the swag-bellied bookseller's activity 
was taxed. Scott exclaiming exultingly, though perhaps for 
the tenth time, " This will be a glorious spring for our trees, 
Tom!" — "You may say that, Shirra," quoth Tom, — and 
then lingering a moment for Constable, — " My certy," he 
added, scratching his head, " and I think it will be a grand 
season for our buiks too." But indeed Tom always talked of 
our buiks as if they had been as regular products of the soil as 
our aits and our birks. Having threaded, first the Hexilcleugh, 
and then the Rhymer's Glen, we arrived at Huntley Burn, 
where the hospitality of the kind Weird-Sisters, as Scott called 
the Miss Pergussons, reanimated our exhausted Bibliopoles, 
and gave them courage to extend their walk a little further 
down the same famous brook. Here there was a small cottage 
in a very sequestered situation, by making some little addi- 
tions to which Scott thought it might be converted into a suit- 
able summer residence for his daughter and future son-in-law. 
The details of that plan were soon settled — it was agreed on 
all hands that a sweeter scene of seclusion could not be fancied. 
He repeated some verses of Rogers' " Wish," which paint the 
spot : — 

" Mine be a cot beside the hill — 
A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear ; 
A willowy brook that turns a mill, 
With many a fall shall linger near: " &c. 

But when he came to the stanza — 

"And Lucy at her wheel shall sing, 
In russet-gown and apron blue," 

1 There is in the dining-room at Abbotsford a clever little sketch in oil 
of Tom Purdie by Edwin Landseer, R.A. — who often enjoyed Tom's 
company in sports both of flood and field. 



HUNTLEY BURN. 353 

he departed from the text, addiDg — 

" But if Bluestockings here you bring, 
The Great Unknown won't dine with you." 

Johnny Ballantyne, a projector to the core, was particularly 
zealous about this embryo establishment. Foreseeing that he 
should have had walking enough ere he reached Huntley Burn, 
his dapper little Newmarket groom had been ordered to fetch 
Old Mortality thither, and now, mounted on his fine hunter, 
he capered about us, looking pallid and emaciated as a ghost, 
but as gay and cheerful as ever, and would fain have been per- 
mitted to ride over hedge and ditch to mark out the proper 
line of the future avenue. Scott admonished him that the 
country-people, if they saw him at such work, would take the 
whole party for heathens ; and clapping spurs to his horse, he 
left us. " The deiPs in the body," quoth Tom Purdie ; " he'll 
be ower every yett atween this and Turn-again, though it be the 
Lord's day. I wadna wonder if he were to be ceeted before the 
Session." — "Be sure, Tarn," cries Constable, "that you egg 
on the Dominie to blaw up his father — I wouldna grudge a hun- 
dred miles o' gait to see the ne'er-do-weel on the stool, and 
neither, I'll be sworn, would the Sheriff." — "1ST a, na," quoth 
the Sheriff, " we'll let sleeping dogs be, Tarn." 

As we walked homeward, Scott, being a little fatigued, laid 
his left hand on Tom's shoulder, and leaned heavily for sup- 
port, chatting to his " Sunday poney," as he called the affec- 
tionate fellow, just as freely as with the rest of the party, and 
Tom put in his word shrewdly and manfully, and grinned and 
grunted whenever the joke chanced to be within his apprehen- 
sion. It was easy to see that his heart swelled within him 
from the moment that the Sheriff got his collar in his gripe. 

There arose a little dispute between them about what tree or 
trees ought to be cut down in a hedge-row that we passed; 
and Scott seemed somewhat ruffled with finding that some pre- 
vious hints of his on that head had not been attended to. 
When we got into motion again, his hand was on Constable's 
shoulder — and Tom dropped a pace or two to the rear, until 
we approached a gate, when he jumped forward and opened it. 
"Give us a pinch of your snuff, Tom," quoth the Sheriff. 
Tom's mull was produced, and the hand resumed its position. 
I was much diverted with Tom's behaviour when we at length 
reached Abbotsford. There were some garden chairs on the 
green in front of the cottage porch. Scott sat down on one of 
them to enjoy the view of his new tower as it gleamed in the 
2a 



354 LIFE OF SIE WALTER SCOTT. 

sunset, and Constable and I did the like. Mr. Purdie remained 
lounging near us for a few minutes, and then asked the Sheriff 
" to speak a word." They withdrew together into the garden 

— and Scott presently rejoined us with a particularly comical 
expression of face. As soon as Tom was out of sight, he said 

— "Will ye guess what he has been saying, now? — Well, 
this is a great satisfaction ! Tom assures me that he has 
thought the matter over, and will take my advice about the 
thinning of that clump behind Captain Pergusson's." 1 

I must not forget, that whoever might be at Abbotsford, 
Tom always appeared at his master's elbow on Sunday, when 
dinner was over, and drank long life to the Laird and the Lady 
and all the good company, in a quaigh of whisky, or a tumbler 
of wine, according to his fancy. I believe Scott has some- 
where expressed in print his satisfaction that, among all the 
changes of our manners, the ancient freedom of personal inter- 
course may still be indulged between a master and an out-of- 
doors servant ; but in truth he kept by the old fashion even 
with domestic servants, to an extent which I have hardly seen 
practised by any other gentleman. He conversed with his 
coachman if he sat by him, as he often did on the box — with 
his footman, if he happened to be in the rumble ; and when 
there was any very young lad in the household, he held it a 
point of duty to see that his employments were so arranged as 
to leave time for advancing his education, made him bring his 
copy-book once a week to the library, and examined him as to 
all that he was doing. Indeed he did not confine this human- 
ity to his own people. Any steady servant of a friend of his 

1 I was obliged to the Sheriff's companion of 1815, John Scott of Gala, 
for reminding me of the following trait of Tom Purdie. The first time 
John Richardson of Fludyer Street (one of Sir Walter's dearest friends) 
came to Abbotsford, Tom (who took him for a Southron) was sent to 
attend upon him while he tried for a fish {i.e. a salmon) in the neigh- 
bourhood of Melrose Bridge. As they walked thither, Tom boasted 
grandly of the size of the fish he had himself caught there, evidently giv- 
ing the stranger no credit for much skill in the Waltonian craft. By and 
by, however, Richardson, who was an admirable angler, hooked a vigor- 
ous fellow, and after a beautiful exhibition of the art, landed him in 
safety. "A fine fish, Tom." — " Oo, aye, Sir," quoth Tom — "it's a 
bonny grilse." " A grilse, Tom! " says Mr. R. — "it's as heavy a salmon 
as the heaviest you were telling me about." Tom shewed his teeth in a 
smile of bitter incredulity ; but while they were still debating, Lord Som- 
erville's fisherman came up with scales in his basket, and Richardson 
insisted on having his victim weighed. The result was triumphant for 
the captor. " Weel," says Tom, letting the salmon drop on the turf — 
" weel, ye are a meikle fish, mon — and a meikle/«?e too," (he added in 
a lower key) "to let yoursel be kilt by an Englander." 



TOM PURDIE. 



355 



was soon considered as a sort of friend too, and was sure to 
have a kind little colloquy to himself at coming and going. 
With all this, Scott was a very rigid enforcer of discipline — 
contrived to make it thoroughly understood by all about him, 
that they must do their part by him as he did his by them ; 
and the result was happy. I never knew any man so well 
served as he was — so carefully, so respectfully, and so silently ; 
and I cannot help doubting if in any department of human 
operations real kindness ever compromised real dignity. 



CHAPTEE XL 

Scott's Baronetcy — Portrait by Lawrence and Bust by Chantrey — 
Presidency of the Royal Society of Edinburgh — Hospitalities and 
Sports at Abbotsf ord — Publication of The Monastery — The Abbot — 
and Kenilworth. 1820. 

The novel of The Monastery was published in the begin- 
ning of March 1820. It appeared not in the post 8vo form of 
Ivanhoe, but in 3 vols. 12nio, like the earlier works of the 
series. In fact, a few sheets of The Monastery had been 
printed before Scott agreed to let Ivanhoe have "By the 
Author of Waverley" on its title-page; and the different 
shapes of the two books belonged to the abortive scheme of 
passing off " Mr. Laurence Templeton " as a hitherto unheard- 
of candidate for literary success. 

At the rising of his Court on the 12th, he proceeded to 
London, for the purpose of receiving his baronetcy, which he 
had been prevented from doing in the spring of the preceding 
year by illness, and again at Christmas by family afflictions. 
The Prince Regent was now King. 

One of his first visitors was Sir Thomas Lawrence, who 
informed him that his Majesty had resolved to adorn the great 
gallery, then in progress at Windsor Castle, with portraits by 
his hand of his most distinguished contemporaries; all the 
reigning monarchs of Europe, and their chief ministers and 
generals, had already sat for this purpose : on the same walls 
the King desired to see exhibited those of his own subjects 
who had attained the highest honours of literature and science 
— and it w r as his pleasure that this series should commence 
with Walter Scott. The portrait was begun immediately, and 
the head was finished before Scott left town. Sir Thomas has 
caught and fixed w r ith admirable skill one of the loftiest ex- 
pressions of his countenance at the proudest period of his life : 
to the perfect truth of the representation, every one who ever 
surprised him in the act of composition at his desk will bear 
witness. The expression, however, was one with which many 
who had seen the man often, were not familiar; and it w r as 

356 



PORTE AIT BY LAWBENCE. 357 

extremely unfortunate that Sir Thomas filled in the figure 
from a separate sketch after he had quitted London. When I 
first saw the head, I thought nothing could be better; but 
there was an evident change for the worse when the picture 
appeared in its finished state — for the rest of the person had 
been done on a different scale, and this neglect of proportion 
takes considerably from the majestic effect which the head 
itself, and especially the mighty pile of forehead, had in 
nature. I hope one day to see a good engraving of the head 
alone, as I first saw it floating on a dark sea of canvas. 

Lawrence told me several years afterwards that, in his 
opinion, the two greatest men he had painted were the Duke 
of Wellington and Sir Walter Scott ; " and it was odd/' said 
he, "that they both chose usually the same hour for sitting — 
seven in the morning. They were both as patient sitters as I 
ever had. Scott, however, was, in my case at least, a very 
difficult subject. I had selected what struck me as his noblest 
look ; but when he was in the chair before me, he talked away 
on all sorts of subjects in his usual style, so that it cost me 
great pains to bring him back to solemnity, when I had to 
attend to anything beyond the outline of a subordinate feature. 
I soon found that the surest recipe was to say something that 
would lead him to recite a bit of poetry. I used to introduce 
by hook or by crook a few lines of Campbell or Byron ; he was 
sure to take up the passage where I left it, or cap it by some- 
thing better — and then — when he was, as Dry den says of 
one of his heroes, 

' Made up of three parts fire — so full of heaven 
It sparkled at his eyes ' — 

then was my time — and I made the best use I could of it. 

The hardest day's work I had with him was once when- 1 

accompanied him to my painting room. ■ was in particu- 
larly gay spirits, and nothing would serve him but keeping 
both artist and sitter in a perpetual state of merriment by 
anecdote upon anecdote about poor Sheridan. The anecdotes 
were mostly in themselves black enough — but the style of the 
conteur was irresistibly quaint and comical. When Scott came 
next, he said he was ashamed of himself for laughing so much 
as he listened to them ; ' for truly,' quoth he, ' if the tithe was 
fact, might have said to Sherry — as Lord Braxfield once 

1 A distinguished Whig friend. 



358 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

said to an eloquent culprit at the bar — " Ye're a verra clever 
chiel', man, but ye wad be nane the waur o' a hanging." ' " 

It was also during this visit to London that Scott sat to 
Chantrey for that bust which alone preserves for posterity the 
cast of expression most fondly remembered by all who ever 
mingled in his domestic circle. Chantrey's request that Scott 
would sit to him was communicated through Allan Cunning- 
ham, clerk of the works in the great sculptor's establishment. 
" Honest Allan," in his early days, when gaining his bread as 
a stone-mason in Nithsdale, made a pilgrimage on foot into 
Edinburgh, for the sole purpose of seeing the author of Mar- 
mion as he passed along the street. He was now in possession 
of a celebrity of his own, and had mentioned to his patron his 
purpose of calling on Scott to thank him for some kind mes- 
sage he had received, through a common friend, on the subject 
of those "Bemains of islthsclale and Galloway Song," which 
first made his poetical talents known to the public. Chantrey 
embraced this opportunity of conveying to Scott his own long- 
cherished ambition of modelling his head ; and Scott at once 
assented to the flattering proposal. " It was about nine in the 
morning," says Mr. Cunningham, " that I sent in my card to 
him at Miss Dumergue's in Piccadilly. It had not been gone 
a minute, when I heard a quick heavy step coming, and in he 
came, holding out both hands, as was his custom, and saying, 
as he pressed mine — ' Allan Cunningham, I am glad to see 
you.' I said something," continues Mr. C, " about the pleas- 
ure I felt in touching the hand that had charmed me so much. 
He moved his hand, and with one of his comic smiles said, 
i Ay — and a big brown hand it is.' I was a little abashed at 
first : Scott saw it, and soon put me at my ease ; he had the 
power — I had almost called it the art, but art it was not — of 
winning one's heart, and restoring one's confidence, beyond any 
man I ever met." 

Chantrey's purpose had been the same as Lawrence's — to 
seize a poetical phasis of the countenance; and when the 
poet first sat, he proceeded to model the head as looking up- 
wards, gravely and solemnly. The talk that passed, meantime, 
had amused and gratified both, and fortunately at parting, 
Chantrey requested that Scott would come and breakfast with 
him next morning before they recommenced operations in the 
studio. He accepted the invitation, and when he arrived 
again in Ecclestone Street, found two or three acquaintances 
assembled to meet him, — among others, his old friend Eichard 
Heber. The breakfast was, as any party in Sir Francis 



BUST BY CHANTBET. 359 

Chantrey's house was sure to be, a gay one, and not having 
seen Heber in particular for several years, Scott's spirits were 
unusually excited. " In the midst of the mirth (says Cunning- 
ham) John (commonly called Jack) Fuller, the member for 
Surrey, and standing jester of the House of Commons, came 
in. Heber, who was well acquainted with the free and joy- 
ous character of that worthy, began to lead him out by relat- 
ing some festive anecdotes : Fuller growled approbation, and 
indulged us with some of his odd sallies ; things which he 
assured us ' were damned good, and true too, which was better.' 
Mr. Scott, who was standing when Fuller came in, eyed him 
at first with a look grave and considerate ; but as the stream 
of conversation flowed, his keen eye twinkled brighter and 
brighter; his stature increased, for he drew himself up, and 
seemed to take the measure of the hoary joker, body and soul. 
An hour or two of social chat had meanwhile induced Chantrey 
to alter his views as to the bust, and when Scott left us, he 
said to me privately, ' This will never do — I shall never be 
able to please myself with a perfectly serene expression. I 
must try his conversational look, take him when about to 
break out into some sly funny old story.' As Chantrey said 
this, he took a string, cut off the head of the bust, put it into 
its present position, touched the eyes and mouth slightly, and 
wrought such a transformation, that when Scott came to his 
third sitting, he smiled and said — 'Ay, ye're mair like 
yoursel now! — Why, Mr. Chantrey, no witch of old ever 
performed such cantrips with clay as this.' " 

The baronetcy was conferred on him, not in consequence of 
any Ministerial suggestion, but by the King personally, and of 
his own unsolicited motion ; and when the poet kissed his 
hand, he said to him — "I shall always reflect with pleasure 
on Sir Walter Scott's having been the first creation of my reign." 

The Gazette announcing this was dated March 30, 1820 ; and 
the Baronet, as soon afterwards as he could get away from 
Lawrence, set out on his return to the North ; for he had such 
respect for the ancient prejudice (a classical as well as a 
Scottish one) against marrying in May, that he was anxious to 
have the ceremony in which his daughter was concerned, over 
before that unlucky month should commence. He reached Edin- 
burgh late in April, and on the 29th of that month he gave 
me the hand of his daughter Sophia. The wedding, more 
JScotico, took place in the evening ; and adhering on all such 
occasions to ancient modes of observance with the same punc- 
tiliousness which he mentions as distinguishing his worthy 



360 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

father, he gave a jolly supper afterwards to all the friends and 
connexions of the young couple. 

In May 1820, he received from both the English Universities 
the highest compliment which it was in their power to offer him. 
The Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge communicated 
to him, in the same week, their request that he would attend 
at the approaching Commemorations, and accept the honorary 
degree of Doctor in Civil Law. It was impossible for him to 
leave Scotland again in time ; and on various subsequent 
renewals of the same flattering proposition from either body, 
he was prevented by similar circumstances from availing him- 
self of their distinguished kindness. 

About the middle of August, my wife and I went to Abbots- 
ford ; and we remained there for several weeks, during which 
I became familiarised to Sir Walter Scott's mode of existence 
in the country. The humblest person who stayed merely for 
a short visit, must have departed with the impression that 
what he witnessed was an occasional variety; that Scott's 
courtesy prompted him to break in upon his habits when he 
had a stranger to amuse ; but that it was physically impossible 
that the man who was writing the Waverley romances at the 
rate of nearly twelve volumes in the year, could continue, week 
after week, and month after month, to devote all but a hardly 
perceptible fraction of his mornings to out-of-doors occupations, 
and the whole of his evenings to the entertainment of a con- 
stantly varying circle of guests. The hospitality of his after- 
noons must alone have been enough to exhaust the energies of 
almost any man ; for his visitors did not mean, like those of 
country-houses in general, to enjoy the landlord's good cheer 
and amuse each other ; but the far greater proportion arrived 
from a distance, for the sole sake of the Poet and Novelist 
himself, whose person they had never before seen, and whose 
voice they might never again have an opportunity of hearing. 
No other villa in Europe was ever resorted to from the same 
motives, and to anything like the same extent, except Ferney ; 
and Voltaire never dreamt of being visible to his hunters, except 
for a brief space of the day ; — few of them even dined with him, 
and none of them seems to have slept under his roof. Scott's 
establishment, on the contrary, resembled in every particular 
that of the affluent idler, who, because he has inherited, or 
would fain transmit political influence in some province, keeps 
open house — receives as many as he has room, for, and sees 
their apartments occupied, as soon as they vacate them, by 
another troop of the same description. Even on gentlemen 



HOSPITALITY AT ABBOT SFOED. 361 

guiltless of inkshed, the exercise of hospitality upon this sort 
of scale is found to impose a heavy tax ; few of them, now-a- 
days, think of maintaining it for any large portion of the 
year : very few indeed below the highest rank of the nobility 
— in whose case there is usually a staff of led-captains, led- 
chaplains, servile dandies, and semi-'professional talkers and 
jokers from London, to take the chief part of the burden. 
Now, Scott had often in his mouth the pithy verses — 

' ' Conversation is but carving : — 
Give no more to every guest, 
Than he's able to digest : 
Give him always of the prime, 
And but little at a time ; 
Carve to all but just enough, 
Let them neither starve nor stuff ; 
And that you may have your due, 
Let your neighbours carve for you : " 

and he, in his own familiar circle always, and in other circles 
where it was possible, furnished a happy exemplification of 
these rules and regulations of the Dean of St. Patrick's. But 
the same sense and benevolence which dictated adhesion to 
them among his old friends and acquaintance, rendered it 
necessary to break them when he was receiving strangers of 
the class I have described above at Abbotsford : he felt that 
their coming was the best homage they could pay to his celeb- 
rity, and that it would have been as uncourteous in him not 
to give them their fill of his talk, as it would be in your every- 
day lord of manors to make his casual guests welcome indeed 
to his venison, but keep his grouse-shooting for his immediate 
allies and dependants. 

Every now and then he received some stranger who was 
not indisposed to take his part in the carving; and how 
good-humouredly he surrendered the lion's share to any one 
that seemed to covet it — with what perfect placidity he sub- 
mitted to be bored even by bores of the first water, must have 
excited the admiration of many besides the daily observers of 
his proceedings. I have heard a spruce Senior Wrangler lect- 
ure him for half an evening on the niceties of the Greek epi- 
gram ; I have heard the poorest of all parliamentary blunderers 
try to detail to him the pros and cons of what he called the 
Truck system; and in either case the same bland eye watched 
the lips of the tormentor.. But, with such ludicrous excep- 
tions, Scott was the one object of the Abbotsford pilgrims ; and 
evening followed evening only to shew him exerting, for their 



362 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

amusement, more of animal spirits, to say nothing of intellect- 
ual vigour, than would have been considered by any other 
man in the company as sufficient for the whole expenditure 
of a week's existence. Yet this was not the chief marvel : he 
talked of things that interested himself, because he knew that 
by doing so he should give most pleasure to his guests. But 
how vast was the range of subjects on which he could talk 
with unaffected zeal; and with what admirable delicacy of 
instinctive politeness did he select his topic according to 
the peculiar history, study, pursuits, or social habits of the 
stranger ! And all this was done without approach to the 
unmanly trickery of what is called catching the tone of the per- 
son one converses with. Scott took the subject on which 
he thought such a man or woman would like best to hear him 
speak — but not to handle it in their way, or in any way but 
what was completely, and most simply his own ; — not to flat- 
ter them by embellishing, with the illustration of his genius, 
the views and opinions which they were supposed to entertain, 

— but to let his genius play out its own variations, for his own 
delight and theirs, as freely and easily, and with as endless a 
multiplicity of delicious novelties, as ever the magic of Beetho- 
ven or Mozart could fling over the few primitive notes of a 
village air. 

It is the custom in some, perhaps in many, country-houses to 
keep a register of the guests, and I have often regretted that 
nothing of the sort was ever attempted at Abbotsford. It 
would have been a curious record — especially if so contrived 

— (as I have seen done) — that the names of each day should, 
by their arrangement on the page, indicate the exact order in 
which the company sat at dinner. It would hardly, I believe, 
be too much to affirm, that Sir Walter Scott entertained, under 
his roof, in the course of the seven or eight brilliant seasons 
when his prosperity was at its height, as many persons of dis- 
tinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and in science, 
as the most princely nobleman of his age ever did in the like 
space of time. — I turned over, since I wrote the preceding 
sentence, Mr. Lodge's compendium of the British Peerage, and 
on summing up the titles which suggested to myself some 
reminiscence of this kind, I found them nearly as one out of 
six. — I fancy it is not beyond the mark to add, that of the 
eminent foreigners who visited our island within this period, a 
moiety crossed the Channel mainly in consequence of the 
interest with which his writings had invested Scotland — and 
that the hope of beholding the man under his own roof was the 



HOSPITALITY AT ABBOTSFOBD. 363 

crowning motive with half that moiety. As for countrymen 
of his own, like him ennobled, in the higher sense of that 
word, by the display of their intellectual energies, if any one 
such contemporary can be pointed out as having crossed the 
Tweed, and yet not spent a day at Abbotsford, I shall be 
surprised. 

It is needless to add, that Sir Walter was familiarly known, 
long before the days I am speaking of, to almost all the 
nobility and higher gentry of Scotland; and consequently, 
that there seldom wanted a fair proportion of them to assist 
him in doing the honours of his country. It is still more 
superfluous to say so respecting the heads of his own profes- 
sion at Edinburgh: Sibi et amicis — Abbotsford was their villa 
whenever they pleased to resort to it, and few of them were 
ever absent from it long. He lived meanwhile in a constant 
interchange of easy visits with the gentlemen's families of 
Teviotdale and the Forest ; so that mixed up with his super- 
fine admirers of the Mayfair breed, his staring worshippers 
from foreign parts, and his quick-witted coevals of the Parlia- 
ment House — there was found generally some hearty home- 
spun laird, with his dame, and the young laird — a bashful 
bumpkin, perhaps, whose ideas did not soar beyond his gun 
and pointer — or perhaps a little pseudo-dandy, for whom the 
Kelso race-course and the Jedburgh ball were Life and the 
World. To complete the olla podrida, we must remember that 
no old acquaintance, or family connexions, however remote 
their actual station or style of manners from his own, were 
forgotten or lost sight of. He had some, even near relations, 
who, except when they visited him, rarely if ever found admit- 
tance to what the haughty dialect of the upper world is pleased 
to designate exclusively as society. These were welcome guests, 
let who might be under that roof ; and it was the same with 
many a worthy citizen of Edinburgh, habitually moving in an 
obscure circle, who had been in the same class with Scott at 
the High School, or his fellow-apprentice when he was proud 
of earning threepence a page by the use of his pen. To dwell 
on nothing else, it was surely a beautiful perfection of real 
universal humanity and politeness, that could enable this great 
and good man to blend guests so multifarious in one group, 
and contrive to make them all equally happy with him, with 
themselves, and with each other. 

I remember saying to William Allan one morning as the 
whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast — "A 
faithful sketch of what you at this moment see, would be 



364 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

more interesting a hundred years hence, than the grandest 
so-called historical picture that you will ever exhibit at Somer- 
set House ; " and my friend agreed with me so cordially, that 
I often wondered afterwards he had not attempted to realise 
the suggestion. The subject ought, however, to have been 
treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin Landseer. 
It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness 
in the air that doubled the animating influence of the sun- 
shine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing match on 
Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked out other 
sport for himself was the staunchest of anglers, Mr. Eose ; but 
he, too, was there on his shelty, armed with his salmon-rod and 
landing-net, and attended by his humorous squire Hinves, and 
Charlie Purdie, a brother of Tom, in those days the most cele- 
brated fisherman of the district. This little group of Walto- 
nians, bound for Lord Soinerville's preserve, remained lounging 
about to witness the start of the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, 
mounted on Sibyl, was marshalling the order of procession 
with a huge hunting-whip; and, among a dozen frolicsome 
youths and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all dis- 
cipline, appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the 
youngest sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. 
Wollaston, and the patriarch of Scottish belles-lettres, Henry 
Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded 
with some difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his 
faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the sociable, 
until we should reach the ground of our battue. Laidlaw, on a 
long-tailed wiry Highlander, yclept Hoddin Grey, which car- 
ried him nimbly and stoutly, although his feet almost touched 
the ground as he sat, was the adjutant. But the most pictu- 
resque figure was the illustrious inventor of the safety-lamp. 
He had come for his favourite sport of angling, and had been 
practising it successfully with Eose, his travelling companion, 
for two or three days preceding this, but he had not prepared 
for coursing fields, or had left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir 
Walter's on a sudden thought; and his fisherman's costume — 
a brown hat with flexible brims, surrounded with line upon 
line, and innumerable fly-hooks — jack-boots worthy of a Dutch 
smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of 
salmon, made a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white-cord 
breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less distin- 
guished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was in black, and 
with his noble serene dignity of countenance might have 
passed for a sporting archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie, at this time 



SPOETS AT ABBOTSFORD. 365 

in the 76tb year of his age, with a white hat turned up with 
green, green spectacles, green jacket, and long brown leathern 
gaiters buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a dog-whistle 
round his neck, and had all over the air of as resolute a 
devotee as the gay captain of Huntley Burn. Tom Purdie and 
his subalterns had preceded us by a few hours with all the 
greyhounds that could be collected at Abbotsford, Darnick, 
and Melrose ; but the giant Maida had remained as his mas- 
ter's orderly, and now gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking 
for mere joy like a spaniel puppy. 

The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable was 
just getting under weigh, when the Lady Anne broke from the 
line, screaming with laughter, and exclaimed — " Papa, papa, I 
knew you could never think of going without your pet." — 
Scott looked round, and I rather think there was a blush as 
well as a smile upon his face, when he perceived a little black 
pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a self-elected addi- 
tion to the party of the day. He tried to look stern, and 
cracked his whip at the creature, but was in a moment obliged 
to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy soon found a strap 
round its neck, and was dragged into. the background: — Scott, 
watching the retreat, repeated with mock pathos the first verse 
of an old pastoral song — 

' ' What will I do gin my hoggie 1 die ? 
My joy, my pride, my hoggie ! 
My only beast, I had nae mae, 
And wow ! but I was vogie ! " 

— the cheers were redoubled — and the squadron moved on. 

This pig had taken — nobody could tell how — a most senti- 
mental attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging its pre- 
tensions to be admitted a regular member of his tail along with 
the greyhounds and terriers ; but indeed I remember him suf- 
fering another summer under the same sort of pertinacity on 
the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the explanation for 
philosophers — but such were the facts. I have too much re- 
spect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to name him in the 
same category of pets with the pig and the hen ; but a year or 
two after this time, my wife used to drive a couple of these 
animals in a little garden chair, and whenever her father ap- 
peared at the door of our cottage, we were sure to see Hannah 

1 Hog signifies in the Scotch dialect a young sheep that has never been 
shorn. Hence, no doubt, the name of the Poet of Ettrick — derived from 
a long line of shepherds. 



366 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

More and Lady Morgan (as Anne Scott had wickedly christened 
them) trotting from their pasture to lay their noses over the 
paling, and, as Washington Irving says of the old white-haired 
hedger with the Parisian snuff-box, " to have a pleasant crack 
with the laird." 

But to return to the chasse. On reaching Newark Castle, 
we found Lady Scott, her eldest daughter, and the venerable 
Mackenzie, all busily engaged in unpacking a basket that had 
been placed in their carriage, and arranging the luncheon it con- 
tained upon the mossy rocks overhanging the bed of the Yar- 
row. When such of the company as chose had partaken of 
this refection, the Man of Feeling resumed his pony, and all as- 
cended the mountain, duly marshalled at proper distances, so 
as to beat in a broad line over the heather, Sir Walter direct- 
ing the movement from the right wing — towards Blackandro. 
Davy, next to whom I chanced to be riding, laid his whip about 
the fern like an experienced hand, but cracked many a joke, 
too, upon his own jackboots, and surveying the long eager bat- 
talion of bush-rangers, exclaimed — " Good heavens ! is it thus 
that I visit the scenery of the Lay of the Last Minstrel ? " He 
then kept muttering to himself, as his glowing eye — (the finest 
and brightest that I ever saw) — ran over the landscape, some 
of those beautiful lines from the Conclusion of the Lay — 

" But still, 



When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill, 
And July's eve, with balmy breath, 
Waved the bluebells on Newark heath, 
When throstles sung on Hareheadshaw, 
And corn was green in Carterkaugh, 
And nourished, broad, Blakandro's oak, 
The aged harper's soul awoke," &c. 

Mackenzie, spectacled though he was, saw the first sitting 
hare, gave the word to slip the dogs, and spurred after them 
like a boy. All the seniors, indeed, did well as long as the 
course was upwards, but when puss took down the declivity, 
they halted and breathed themselves upon the knoll — cheering 
gaily, however, the young people, who dashed at full speed past 
and below them. Coursing on such a mountain is not like the 
same sport over a set of fine English pastures. There were 
gulfs to be avoided and bogs enough to be threaded — many a 
stiff nag stuck fast — many a bold rider measured his length 
among the peat-hags — and another stranger to the ground 
besides Davy plunged neck-deep into a treacherous well-head, 
which, till they were floundering in it, had borne all the ap- 



SPORTS AT ABBOTSFORD. 367 

pearance of a piece of delicate green turf. When Sir Hum- 
phry emerged from his involuntary bath, his habiliments 
garnished with mud, slime, and mangled water-cresses, Sir 
Walter received him with a triumphant encore I But the phi- 
losopher had his revenge, for joining soon afterwards in a brisk 
gallop, Scott put Sibyl Grey to a leap beyond her prowess, and 
lay humbled in the ditch, while Davy, who was better mounted, 
cleared it and him at a bound. Happily there was little dam- 
age done — but no one was sorry that the sociable had been 
detained at the foot of the hill. 

I have seen Sir Humphry in many places, and in company 
of many different descriptions ; but never to such advantage as 
at Abbotsford. His host and he delighted in each other, and 
the modesty of their mutual admiration was a memorable spec- 
tacle. Davy was by nature a poet — and Scott, though any- 
thing but a philosopher in the modern sense of that term, 
might, I think it very likely, have pursued the study of physi- 
cal science with zeal and success, had he chanced to fall in 
with such an instructor as Sir Humphry would have been to 
him, in his early life. Each strove to make the other talk — 
and they did so in turn more charmingly than I ever heard 
either on any other occasion whatsoever. Scott in his romantic 
narratives touched a deeper chord of feeling than usual, when 
he had such a listener as Davy; and Davy, when induced to 
open his views upon any question of scientific interest in 
Scott's presence, did so with a degree of clear energetic elo- 
quence, and with a flow of imagery and illustration, of which 
neither his habitual tone of table-talk (least of all in London), 
nor any of his prose writings (except, indeed, the posthumous 
Consolations of Travel) could suggest an adequate notion. I 
say his prose writings — for who that has read his sublime 
quatrains on the doctrine of Spinoza can doubt that he might 
have united, if he had pleased, in some great didactic poem, 
the vigorous ratiocination of Dry den and the moral majesty 
of Wordsworth? I remember William Laidlaw whisper- 
ing to me, one night, when their "rapt talk" had k;ept 
the circle round the fire until long after the usual bedtime 
of Abbotsford — " Gude preserve us ! this is a very superior 
occasion ! Eh, sirs ! " he added, cocking his eye like a bird, 
"I wonder if Shakspeare and Bacon ever met to screw ilk 
other up ? " 

Since I have touched on the subject of Sir Walter's autumnal 
diversions in these his latter years, I may as well notice here 
two annual festivals, when sport was made his pretext for 



368 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

assembling his rural neighbours about him — days eagerly 
anticipated, and fondly remembered by many. One was a 
solemn bout of salmon-fishing for the neighbouring gentry 
and their families, instituted originally, I believe, by Lord 
Somerville, and now, in his absence, conducted and presided 
over by the Sheriff. Charles Purdie, Tom's brother, had charge 
(partly as lessee) of the salmon-fisheries for three or four miles 
of the Tweed, including all the water attached to the lands of 
Abbotsford, Gala, and Allwyn ; and this festival had been es- 
tablished with a view, besides other considerations, of recom- 
pensing him for the attention he always bestowed on any of the 
lairds or their visitors that chose to fish, either from the 
banks or the boat, within his jurisdiction. His selection of 
the day, and other precautions, generally secured an abundance 
of sport for the great anniversary ; and then the whole party 
assembled to regale on the newly caught prey, boiled, grilled, 
and roasted in every variety of preparation, beneath a grand 
old ash, adjoining Charlie's cottage at Boldside, on the northern 
margin of the Tweed, about a mile above Abbotsford. This 
banquet took place earlier in the day or later, according to 
circumstances ; but it often lasted till the harvest moon shone 
on the lovely scene and its revellers. These formed groups 
that would have done no discredit to Watteau — and a still 
better hand has painted the background in the Introduction of 
The Monastery : — " On the opposite bank of the Tweed might 
be seen the remains of ancient enclosures, surrounded by syca- 
mores and ash-trees of considerable size. These had once 
formed the crofts or arable ground of a village, now reduced 
to a single hut, the abode of a fisherman, who also manages a 
ferry. The cottages, even the church which once existed there, 
have sunk into vestiges hardly to be traced without visiting the 
spot, the inhabitants having gradually withdrawn to the more 
prosperous town of Galashiels, which has risen into considera- 
tion within two miles of their neighbourhood. Superstitious 
eld, however, has tenanted the deserted grove with aerial 
beings to supply the want of the mortal tenants who have 
deserted it. The ruined and abandoned churchyard of Bold- 
side has been long believed to be haunted by the Fairies, and 
the deep broad current of the Tweed, wheeling in moonlight 
round the foot of the steep bank, with the number of trees 
originally planted for shelter round the fields of the cottag- 
ers, but now presenting the effect of scattered and detached 
groves, fill up the idea which one would form in imagination 
for a scene that Oberon and Queen Mab might love to revel in. 



SPOBTS AT ABBOTSFOBD. 369 

There are evenings when the spectator might believe, with 
Father Chancer, that the 

' Queen of Faery, 

With harp, and pipe, and symphony, 
Were dwelling in the place.' " 

Sometimes the evening closed with a "burning of the water;" 
and then the Sheriff, though now not so agile as when he prac- 
tised that rough sport in the early times of Ashestiel, was snre 
to be one of the party in the boat, — held a torch, or perhaps 
took the helm, — and seemed to enjoy the whole thing as 
heartily as the youngest of his company — 

" 'Tis blythe along the midnight tide, 
With stalwart arm the boat to guide — ■ 
On high the dazzling blaze to rear, 
And heedful plunge the barbed spear ; 
Rock, wood, and scaur, emerging bright, 
Fling on the stream their ruddy light, 
And from the bank our band appears 
Like Genii armed with fiery spears." * 

The other "superior occasion " came later in the season; the 
28th of October, the birthday of Sir Walter's eldest son, was, 
I think, that usually selected for the Abbotsford Hunt. This 
was a coursing-field on a large scale, including, with as many 
of the young gentry as pleased to attend, all Scott's personal 
favourites among the yeomen and farmers of the surrounding 
country. The Sheriff always took the field, but latterly de- 
volved the command upon his good friend Mr. John Usher, 
the ex-laird of Toftfield; and he could not have had a more 
skilful or a better-humoured lieutenant. The hunt took place 
either on the moors above the Cauldshields' Loch, or over some 
of the hills on the estate of Gala, and we had commonly, ere 
we returned, hares enough to supply the wife of every farmer 
that attended with soup for a week following. The whole then 
dined at Abbotsford, the Sheriff in the chair, Adam Fergusson 
croupier, and Dominie Thompson, of course, chaplain. George, 
by the way, was himself an eager partaker in the preliminary 
sport; and now he would favour us with a grace, in Burns's 
phrase "as long as my arm," beginning with thanks to the 
Almighty, who had given man dominion over the fowls of the 
air, and the beasts of the field, and expatiating on this text 
with so luculent a commentary, that Scott, who had been fum- 

1 See Poetical Works, royal 8vo, p. 694. 
2b 



370 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

bling with his spoon long before he reached Amen, conld not 
help exclaiming as he sat down, " Well done, Mr. George ! I 
think we've had everything but the view holla!" The com- 
pany, whose onset had been thus deferred, were seldom, I think, 
under thirty in number, and sometimes they exceeded forty. 
The feast was such as suited the occasion — a baron of beef at 
the foot of the table, a salted round at the head, while tureens 
of hare-soup and hotch-potch extended down the centre, and 
such light articles as geese, turkeys, a sucking-pig, a singed 
sheep's head, and the unfailing haggis, were set forth by way 
of side-dishes. Blackcock and moorfowl, bushels of snipe, 
black puddings, ivhite puddings, and pyramids of pancakes, 
formed the second course. Ale was the favourite beverage 
during dinner, but there was plenty of port and sherry for 
those whose stomachs they suited. The quaighs of Glenlivet 
were tossed off as if they held water. The wine decanters 
made a few rounds of the table, but the hints for hot punch 
soon became clamorous. Two or three bowls were introduced, 
and placed under the supervision of experienced manufacturers 
— one of these being usually the Ettrick Shepherd — and then 
the business of the evening commenced in good earnest. The 
faces shone and glowed like those at Camacho's wedding : the 
chairman told his richest stories of old rural life, Lowland or 
Highland ; Fergusson and humbler heroes fought their peninsu- 
lar battles o'er again ; the stalwart Dandie Dinmonts lugged out 
their last winter's snow-storm, the parish scandal, perhaps, or 
the dexterous bargain of the Northumberland tryste; and every 
man was knocked down for the song that he sung best, or 
took most pleasure in singing. Sheriff-substitute Shortreed — 
(a cheerful, hearty, little man, with a sparkling eye and a most 
infectious laugh) — gave us Dick o' the Cow, or Now Liddes- 
dale has ridden a raid; his son Thomas (Sir Walter's assiduous 
disciple and assistant in Border Heraldry and Genealogy) shone 
without a rival in The Douglas Tragedy and TJie Twa Corbies; 
a weather-beaten, stiff-bearded veteran, Ccqrtain Ormistoun, as 
he was called (though I doubt if his rank was recognised at 
the Horse-Guards), had the primitive pastoral of Cowden- 
knoices in sweet perfection ; Hogg produced The Women folk, 
or The Kye comes hame; and, in spite of many grinding notes, 
contrived to make everybody delighted whether with the fun or 
the pathos of his ballad; the Melrose doctor sang in spirited 
style some of Moore's masterpieces ; a couple of retired sailors 
joined in Bould Admired Duncan upon the high sea; — and the 
gallant croupier crowned the last bowl with Ale, good ale, thou 



SPORTS AT ABBOTSFORD. 371 

art my darling ! Imagine some smart Parisian savant — some 
dreamy pedant of Halle or Heidelberg — a brace of stray young 
Lords from Oxford or Cambridge, or perhaps their prim college 
tutors, planted here and there amidst these rustic wassailers — 
this being their first vision of the author of Marmion and 
Ivanhoe, and he appearing as heartily at home in the scene as 
if he had been a veritable Dandle himself — his face radiant, 
his laugh gay as childhood, his chorus always ready. And so 
it proceeded until some worthy, who had fifteen or twenty 
miles to ride home, began to insinuate that his wife and bairns 
would be getting sorely anxious about the fords, and the Dum- 
pies and Hoddins were at last heard neighing at the gate, and 
it was voted that the hour had come for dock an dorrach — the 
stirrup-cup — to wit, a bumper all round of the unmitigated 
mountain dew. How they all contrived to get home in safety, 
Heaven only knows — but I never heard of any serious accident 
except upon one occasion, when James Hogg made a bet at 
starting that he would leap over his wall-eyed pony as she 
stood, and broke his nose in this experiment of " o'ervaulting 
ambition." One comely goodwife, far off among the hills, 
amused Sir Walter by telling him, the next time he passed 
her homestead after one of these jolly doings, what her 
husband's first words were when he alighted at his own door 
— " Ailie, my woman, I'm ready for my bed — and oh lass (he 
gallantly added), I wish I could sleep for a towmont, for 
there's only ae thing in this warld worth living for, and 
that's the Abbotsford Hunt!" 

It may well be supposed that the President of the Boldside 
Festival and the Abbotsford Hunt did not omit the good old 
custom of the Kirn. Every November, before quitting the 
country for Edinburgh, he gave a harvest home, on the most 
approved model of former days, to all the peasantry on his 
estate, their friends and kindred, and as many poor neighbours 
besides as his barn could hold. Here old and young danced 
from sunset to sunrise, — John of Skye's bagpipe being re- 
lieved at intervals by the violin of some Wandering Willie ; — 
and the laird and all his family were present during the early 
part of the evening — he and his wife to distribute the con- 
tents of the first tub of whisky-punch, and his young people to 
take their due share in the endless reels and hornpipes of the 
earthen floor. As Mr. Morritt has said of him as he appeared 
at Laird Nippy's kirn of earlier days, " to witness the cor- 
diality of his reception might have unbent a misanthrope." 
He had his private joke for every old wife or " gausie carle," 



372 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

his arch compliment for the ear of every bonny lass, and his 
hand and his blessing for the head of every little Eppie Daidle 
from Abbotstown or Broomielees. 

The whole of the ancient ceremonial of the daft days, as they 
are called in Scotland, obtained respect at Abbotsford. He 
said it was uncanny, and would certainly have felt it very 
uncomfortable, not to welcome the new year in the midst of 
his family, and a few old friends, with the immemorial libation 
of a het pint; but of all the consecrated ceremonies of the 
time none gave him such delight as the visit which he received 
as Laird from all the children on his estate, on the last morn- 
ing of every December — when, in the words of an obscure 
poet often quoted by him, 

" The cottage bairns sing blythe and gay, 
At the ha' door for hogmanay.' 1 '' 

The following is from a new-year's day letter to Joanna 
Baillie : — " The Scottish labourer is in his natural state per- 
haps one of the best, most intelligent and kind-hearted of 
human beings ; and in truth I have limited my other habits 
of expense very much since I fell into the habit of employing 
mine honest people. I wish you could have seen about a 
hundred children, being almost entirely, supported by their 
fathers' or brothers' labour, come down yesterday to dance to 
the pipes, and get a piece of cake and bannock, and pence apiece 
(no very deadly largess) in honour of hogmanay. I declare 
to you, my dear friend, that when I thought the poor fellows 
who kept these children so neat, and well taught, and well 
behaved, were slaving the whole day for eighteen-pence or 
twenty-pence at the most, I was ashamed of their gratitude, 
and of their becks and bows. But after all, one does what 
one can, and it is better twenty families should be comfortable 
according to their wishes and habits, than half that number 
should be raised above their situation. • Besides, like Fortunio 
in the fairy tale, I have my gifted men — the best wrestler 
and cudgel-player — the best runner and leaper — the best 
shot in the little district; and, as I am partial to all manly 
and athletic exercises, these are great favourites, being other- 
wise decent persons, and bearing their faculties meekly. All 
this smells of sad egotism, but what can I write to you about 
save what is uppermost in my own thoughts ? And here am 
I, thinning old plantations and planting new ones ; now un- 
doing what has been done, and now doing what I suppose no 



THE ABBOT. 373 

one would do but myself, and accomplishing all my magical 
transformations by the arms and legs of the aforesaid genii, 
conjured up to my aid at eighteen-pence a day." 

" The notable paradox/' he says in one of the most charming 
of his essays, "that the residence of a proprietor upon his 
estate is of as little consequence as the bodily presence of a 
stockholder upon Exchange, has, we believe, been renounced. 
At least, as in the case of the Duchess of Suffolk's relationship 
to her own child, the vulgar continue to be of opinion that 
there is some difference in favour of the next hamlet and 
village, and even of the vicinage in general, when the squire 
spends his rents at the manor-house, instead of cutting a figure 
in France or Italy. A celebrated politician used to say he 
would willingly bring in one bill to make poaching felony, 
another to encourage the breed of foxes, and a third to revive 
the decayed amusements of cock-fighting and bull-baiting — 
that he would make, in short, any sacrifice to the humours and 
prejudices of the country gentlemen, in their most extravagant 
form, provided only he could prevail upon them to ' dwell in 
their own houses, be the patrons of their own tenantry, and the 
fathers of their own children.' " l 

In September 1820 appeared The Abbot — the continuation, 
to a certain extent, of The Monastery, of which I barely 
mentioned the publication under the preceding March. I 
have nothing of any consequence to add to the information 
which the Introduction of 1830 affords us respecting the com- 
position and fate of the former of these novels. It was con- 
sidered as a failure — the first of the series on which any such 
sentence was pronounced ; — nor have I much to allege in 
favour of the White Lady of Avenel, generally criticised as 
the primary blot — or of Sir Percy Shafton, who was loudly, 
though not quite so- generally, condemned. In either case, 
considered separately, he seems to have erred from dwelling 
(in the German taste) on materials that might have done very 
well for a rapid sketch. The phantom, with whom we have 
leisure to become familiar, is sure to fail — even the witch of 
Enclor is contented with a momentary appearance and five 
syllables of the shade she evokes. And we may say the same 
of any grotesque absurdity in human manners. Scott might 
have considered with advantage how lightly and briefly Shak- 
speare introduces his Euphuism — though actually the preva- 
lent humour of the hour when he was writing. But perhaps 
these errors might have attracted little notice had the novelist 

1 Miscellaneous Prose Works, i. p. viii. 



374 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

been successful in finding some reconciling medium capable 
of giving consistence and harmony to his naturally incongruous 
materials. "These," said one of his ablest critics, "are joined 
— but they refuse to blend: Nothing can be more poetical 
in conception, and sometimes in language, than the fiction of 
the White Maid of Avenel ; but when this ethereal personage, 
who rides on the cloud which ' for Araby is bound ' — who is 

' Something between heaven and hell, 
Something that neither stood nor fell,' — 

whose existence is linked by an awful and mysterious destiny 
to the fortunes of a decaying family; when such a being as 
this descends to clownish pranks, and promotes a frivolous 
jest about a tailor's bodkin, the course of our sympathies is 
rudely arrested, and we feel as if the author had put upon us 
the old-fashioned pleasantry of selling a bargain." 1 

The beautiful natural scenery, and the sterling Scotch char- 
acters and manners introduced in The Monastery, are, however, 
sufficient to redeem even these mistakes ; and, indeed, I am 
inclined to believe that it will ultimately occupy a securer 
place than some romances enjoying hitherto a far higher repu- 
tation, in which he makes no use of Scottish materials. 

Sir Walter himself thought well of The Abbot when he had 
finished it. When he sent me a complete copy, I found on a 
slip of paper at the beginning of volume first, these two lines 
from Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress — 

" Up he rose in a funk, lapped a toothful of brandy, 
And to it again ! — any odds upon Sandy ! " — 

and whatever ground he had been supposed to lose in The 
Monastery, part at least of it was regained by this tale, and 
especially by its most graceful and pathetic portraiture of Mary 
Stuart. "The Castle of Lochleven," says the Chief-Commis- 
sioner Adam, " is seen at every turn from the northern side of 
Blair- Adam. This castle, renowned and attractive above all 
the others in my neighbourhood, became an object. of much 
increased attention, and a theme of constant conversation, after 
the author of Waverley had, by his inimitable power of deline- 
ating character — by his creative poetic fancy in representing 
scenes of varied interest — and by the splendour of his roman- 
tic descriptions, infused a more diversified and a deeper tone 
of feeling into the history of Queen Mary's captivity and 



escape." 



Adolphus's Letters to Heber, p. 13. 



THE MONASTERY. 375 

I have introduced this quotation from a little book privately 
printed for the amiable Judge's own family and familiar friends, 
because Sir Walter owned to myself at the time, that the idea 
of The Abbot had arisen in his mind during a visit to Blair- 
Adam. In the pages of the tale itself, indeed, the beautiful 
localities of that estate are distinctly mentioned, with an allu- 
sion to the virtues and manners that adorned its mansion, such 
as must have been intended to satisfy the possessor (if he could 
have had any doubts on the subject) as to the authorship of 
those novels. 

About Midsummer 1816, the Judge received a visit from his 
near relation William Clerk, Adam Fergusson, his hereditary 
friend and especial favourite, and their lifelong intimate, Scott. 
They remained with him for two or three days, in the course 
of which they were all so much delighted with their host, and 
he with them, that it was resolved to reassemble the party, 
with a few additions, at the same season of every following 
year. This was the origin of the Blair-Adam Club, the regu- 
lar members of which were in number nine. They usually 
contrived to meet on a Friday ; spent the Saturday in a ride 
to some scene of historical interest within an easy distance ; 
enjoyed a quiet Sunday at home — "duly attending divine 
worship at the Kirk of Cleish (not Cleishbotham) " — gave 
Monday morning to another antiquarian excursion, and returned 
to Edinburgh in time for the Courts of Tuesday. From 1816 
to 1831 inclusive, Sir Walter was a constant attendant at these 
meetings. He visited in this way Castle-Campbell, Magus Moor, 
Falkland, Dunfermline, St. Andrew's, and many other scenes 
of ancient celebrity : to one of those trips we must ascribe his 
dramatic sketch of Macduff's Cross — and to that of the dog- 
days of 1819 we owe the weightier obligation of The Abbot. 

To return — for reasons connected with the affairs of the 
Ballantynes, Messrs. Longman published the first edition of 
The Monastery ; and similar circumstances induced Sir Walter 
to associate this house with that of Constable in the succeeding 
novel. Constable disliked its title, and would fain have had 
The Nunnery instead : but Scott stuck to his Abbot. The book- 
seller grumbled a little, but was soothed by the author's recep- 
tion of his request that Queen Elizabeth might be brought into 
the field in his next romance, as a companion to the Mary 
Stuart of The Abbot. Scott would not indeed indulge him 
with the choice of the particular period of Elizabeth's reign, 
indicated in the proposed title of The Armada; but expressed 
his willingness to take up his own old favourite legend of 



376 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Meikle's ballad. He wished to call the novel, like the ballad, 
Cumnor-Hall, but in further deference to Constable's wishes, 
substituted Kenilworth. John Ballantyne objected to this 
title, and told Constable the result would be " something worthy 
of the kennel ; " but Constable had all reason to be satisfied 
with the child of his christening. His partner, Mr. Cadell, 
says — " His vanity boiled over so much at this time, on hav- 
ing his suggestion gone into, that, when in his high moods, he 
used to stalk up and down his room, and exclaim, ' By G — , I 
am all but the author of the Waverley Novels ! ' " Constable's 
bibliographical knowledge, however, it is but fair to say, was 
really of most essential service to Scott upon many of these 
occasions ; and his letter proposing the subject of The Armada, 
furnished such a catalogue of materials for the illustration of 
the period as may, probably enough, have called forth some very 
energetic expression of thankfulness. 

Scott's kindness secured for John Ballantyne the usual 
interest in the profits of Kenilworth, — the last of his great 
works in which his friend was to have any concern. I have 
already mentioned the obvious drooping of his health and 
strength ; yet his manners continued as airy as ever ; — nay, 
it was now, after his maladies had taken a very serious shape, 
and it was hardly possible to look on him without anticipating 
a speedy termination of his career, that the gay hopeful spirit 
of the shattered and trembling invalid led him to plunge into a 
new stream of costly indulgence. It was an amiable point in 
his character, that he had always retained a tender fondness 
for his native place. He had now taken up the ambition of 
rivalling his illustrious friend, in some sort, by providing him- 
self with a summer retirement amidst the scenery of his boy- 
hood; and it need not be doubted, at the same time, that in 
erecting a villa at Kelso, he calculated on substantial advan- 
tages from its vicinity to Abbotsford. 

One fine day of this autumn I accompanied Sir Walter to 
inspect the progress of this edifice, which was to have the title 
of Walton Hall. John had purchased two or three old houses 
with notched gables and thatched roofs, near the end of the 
long original street of Kelso, with their small gardens and pad- 
docks running down to the Tweed. He had already fitted up 
convenient bachelor's lodgings in one of the primitive tenements, 
and converted the others into a goodly range of stabling, and 
was now watching the completion of his new corps de logis 
behind, which included a handsome entrance-hall, or saloon, 
destined to have old Piscator's bust on a stand in the centre, 



PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 377 

and to be embellished all round with emblems of his sport. 
Behind this were spacious rooms overlooking the little pleasance, 
which was to be laid out somewhat in the Italian style, with 
ornamental steps, a fountain and jet d'eau, and a broad terrace 
hanging over the river. In these new dominions John received 
us with pride and hilarity ; we dined gaily, al fresco, by the side 
of his fountain ; and after not a few bumpers to the prosperity 
of Walton Hall, he mounted Old Mortality, and escorted us 
for several miles on our ride homewards. It was this day that, 
overflowing with kindly zeal, Scott revived one of the long- 
forgotten projects of their early connexion in business, and 
offered his gratuitous services as editor of a Novelist's Library, 
to be printed and published for the sole benefit of his host. 
The offer was eagerly embraced, and when, two or three morn- 
ings afterwards, John returned Sir Walter's visit, he had put 
into his hands the MS. of that admirable life of Fielding, which 
was followed at brief intervals, as the arrangements of the 
projected work required, by fourteen others of the same class 
and excellence. The publication of the first volume of Bal- 
lantyne's Novelist's Library did not take place, however, 
until February 1821 ; and notwithstanding its Prefaces, in 
which Scott combines all the graces of his easy narrative with 
a perpetual stream of deep and gentle wisdom in commenting 
on the tempers and fortunes of his best predecessors in novel 
literature, and also with expositions of his own critical views, 
which prove how profoundly he had investigated the principles 
and practice of those masters before he struck out a new path 
for himself — in spite of these delightful and valuable essays, 
the Collection was not a prosperous speculation. 

Sir James Hall of Dunglass resigned, in November 1820, the 
Presidency of the Royal Society of Edinburgh ; and the Fel- 
lows, though they had on all former occasions selected a man 
of science to fill that post, paid Sir Walter the compliment of 
unanimously requesting him to be Sir James's successor in it. 
He felt and expressed a natural hesitation about accepting this 
honour — which at first sight seemed like invading the proper 
department of another order of scholars. But when it was 
urged upon him that the Society is really a double one — em- 
bracing, a section for literature as well as one of science — and 
that it was only due to the former to let it occasionally supply 
the chief of the whole body, — Scott acquiesced in the flatter- 
ing proposal ; and his gentle skill was found effective, so long 
as he held the Chair, in maintaining and strengthening the tone 
of good feeling and good manners which can alone render the 



378 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

meetings of such, a society either agreeable or useful. The 
new President himself soon began to take a lively interest in 
many of their discussions — those at least which pointed to 
any discovery of practical use ; — and he by and by added 
some eminent men of science, with whom his acquaintance had 
hitherto been slight, to the list of his most valued friends ; — 
in particular Sir David Brewster. 

I may mention his introduction about the same time to an 
institution of a far different description, — that called " The 
Celtic Society of Edinburgh ; " a club established mainly for 
the patronage of ancient Highland manners and customs, es- 
pecially the use of " the Garb of Old Gaul " — though part of 
their funds have always been applied to the really important 
object of extending education in the wilder districts of the 
north. At their annual meetings Scott was henceforth a regu- 
lar attendant. He appeared, as in duty bound, in the costume 
of the Fraternity, and was usually followed by " John of Skye," 
in all his plumage. 

His son Charles left home for the first time towards the close 
of 1820 — a boy of exceedingly quick and lively parts, with 
the gentlest and most affectionate and modest of dispositions. 
This threw a cloud over the domestic circle; but, as on the 
former occasion, Sir Walter sought and found comfort in a 
constant correspondence with the absent favourite. Charles 
had gone to Lampeter, in Wales, to be under the care of the 
celebrated scholar John Williams, Archdeacon of Cardigan; 
whose pains were well rewarded in the progress of his pupil. 

About Christmas appeared Kenilworth, in 3 vols, post 8vo, 
like Ivanhoe, which form was adhered to with all the subse- 
quent novels of the series. Kenilworth was one of the most 
successful of them all at the time of publication ; and it con- 
tinues, and, I doubt not, will ever continue to be placed in the 
very highest rank of prose fiction. The rich variety of char- 
acter, and scenery, and incident in this novel, has never indeed 
been surpassed ; nor, with the one exception of the Bride of 
Lammermoor, has Scott bequeathed us a deeper and more affect- 
ing tragedy than that of Amy Robsart. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Death of John Ballantyne — and William Erskine — George IV. at Edin- 
burgh — Visits of Mr. Crabbe and Miss Edgeworth — Reminiscences by- 
Mr. Adolphus — Publication of Lives of the Novelists — Halidon Hill 
— The Pirate — The Fortunes of Nigel — Peveril of the Peak — Quentin 
Durward — and St. Ronan's Well. 1821-1823. 

Before the end of January 1821, he went to London at the 
request of the other Clerks of Session, that he might watch over 
the progress of an Act of Parliament designed to relieve them 
from a considerable part of their drudgery in attesting recorded 
deeds by signature ; — and his stay was prolonged until near 
the beginning of the Summer term of his Court. On his re- 
turn he found two matters of domestic interest awaiting him. 
On the 23d April he writes to the Cornet : — " The noble Cap- 
tain Fergusson was married on Monday last. I was present at 
the bridal, and I assure you the like hath not been seen since 
the days of Lesmahago. Like his prototype, the Captain ad- 
vanced in a jaunty military step, with a kind of leer on his face 
that seemed to quiz the whole affair. You should write to 
your brother sportsman and soldier, and wish the veteran joy 
of his entrance into the band of Benedicts. Odd enough that 
I should christen a grandchild and attend the wedding of a 
contemporary within two days of each other. I have sent 
John of Skye, with Tom, and all the rabblement which they 
can collect, to play the pipes, shout, and fire guns below the 
Captain's windows this morning; and I am just going over to 
hover about on my pony, and witness their reception. The 
happy pair returned to Huntley Burn on Saturday ; but yes- 
terday being Sunday, we permitted them to enjoy their pillows 
in quiet. This morning they must not expect to get off so 
well." 

The Captain and his Lady soon pitched a tent for themselves 
— but it was in the same parish, and Gattonside was but an 
additional Huntley Burn. I may as well introduce here, how- 
ever, Scott's description to Lord Montagu of the Glen and its 
yet undivided community : — " The Captain is a very singular 
fellow; for, with all his humour and knowledge of the world, 

379 



380 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

lie by nature is a remarkably shy and modest man, and more 
afraid of the possibility of intrusion than would occur to any 
one who only sees him in the full stream of society. His sis- 
ter Margaret is extremely like him in the turn of thought and 
of humour, and he has two others who are as great curiosities 
in their way. The eldest is a complete old maid, with all the 
gravity and shyness of the character, but not a grain of its bad 
humour or spleen ; on the contrary, she is one of the kindest 
and most motherly creatures in the world. The second, Mary, 
was in her day a very pretty girl ; but her person became de- 
formed, and she has the sharpness of features with which that 
circumstance is sometimes attended. She rises very early in 
the morning, and roams over all my wild land in the neigh- 
bourhood, wearing the most complicated pile of handkerchiefs 
of different colours on her head, and a stick double her own 
height in her hand, attended by two dogs, whose powers of 
yelping are truly terrific. With such garb and accompani- 
ments, she has very nearly established the character in the 
neighbourhood of being something no canny — and the urchins 
of Melrose and Darnick are frightened from gathering hazel- 
nuts and cutting wands in my cleuch, by the fear of meeting 
the daft lady. With all this quizzicality, I do not believe there 
ever existed a family with so much mutual affection, and such 
an overflow of benevolence to all around them, from men and 
women down to hedge-sparrows and lame ass-colts, more than 
one of which they have taken under their direct and special 
protection/*' 

On the 16th of June 1821, died at Edinburgh John Ballan- 
tyne. Until within a week or two before, Sir Walter had not 
entertained any thought that his end was near. I was present 
at one of their last interviews, and John's death-bed was a 
thing not to be forgotten. We sat by him for perhaps an 
hour, and I think half that space was occupied with his pre- 
dictions of a speedy end, and details of his last will, which he 
had just been executing, and which lay on his coverlid ; the 
other half being given, five minutes or so at a time, to ques- 
tions and remarks, which intimated that the hope of life was 
still flickering before him — nay. that his interest in all its 
concerns remained eager. The proof-sheets of a volume of his 
Novelist's Library lay also by his pillow ; and he passed from 
them to his will, and then back to them, as by jerks and starts 
the unwonted veil of gloom closed upon his imagination, or was 
withdrawn again. He had, he said, left his great friend and 
patron L.2000 towards the completion of the new library at 



DEATH OF JOHN BALLANTYNE. 381 

Abbotsf ord — and the spirit of the auctioneer virtuoso flashed 
up as he began to describe what would, he thought, be the best 
style and arrangement of the book-shelves. He was interrupted 
by an agony of asthma, which left him with hardly any signs of 
life ; and ultimately he did expire in a fit of the same kind. 
Scott was visibly and profoundly shaken by this scene and 
sequel. As we stood together a few days afterwards, while 
they were smoothing the turf over John's remains in the Can- 
ongate churchyard, the heavens which had been dark and 
slaty, cleared up suddenly, and the midsummer sun shone 
forth in his strength. Scott, ever awake to the "skiey influ- 
ences," cast his eye along the overhanging line of the Calton 
Hill, with its gleaming walls and towers, and then turning to 
the grave again, " I feel," he whispered in my ear, — "I feel 
as if there would be less sunshine for me from this day forth." 

As we walked homewards, he told me, among other favour- 
able traits of his friend, one little story which I must not omit. 
He remarked one day to a poor student of divinity attending 
his auction, that he looked as if he were in bad health. The 
young man assented with a sigh. " Come," said Ballantyne, 
" I think I ken the secret of a sort of draft that would relieve 
you — particularly," he added, handing him a cheque for L.5 
or L.10 — " particularly, my dear, if taken upon an empty 
stomach." 

I am sorry to take leave of John Ballantyne with the re- 
mark, that his last will was a document of the same class with 
too many of his states and calendars. So far from having L.2000 
to bequeath to Sir Walter, he died as he had lived, ignorant of 
the situation of his affairs, and deep in debt. 

The coronation of George IV. had been deferred in conse- 
quence of the unhappy affair of the Queen's Trial. The 19th 
of July 1821 was now announced for this solemnity, and Sir 
Walter resolved to be among the spectators. It occurred to 
him that if the Ettrick Shepherd were to accompany him, and 
produce some memorial of the scene likely to catch the popu- 
lar ear in Scotland, good service might thus be done to the 
cause of loyalty. But this was not his only consideration. 
Hogg had married a handsome and most estimable young 
woman, a good deal above his own original rank in life, the 
year before; and expecting with her a dowry of L.1000, he 
had forthwith revived the grand ambition of an earlier day, 
and taken an extensive farm on the Buccleuch estate, at a 
short distance from Altrive Lake. Misfortune pursued the 
Shepherd — the bankruptcy of his wife's father interrupted 



382 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the stocking of the sheep-walk ; and the arable part was sadly 
mismanaged. Scott hoped that a visit to London, and a coro- 
nation poem, or pamphlet, might end in some pension or post 
that would relieve these difficulties, and when writing to Lord 
Sidmonth, to ask a place for himself in the Hall and Abbey of 
Westminster, begged suitable accommodation for Hogg also. 
Lord Sidmouth answered that Sir Walter's wishes should be 
gratified, provided they would both dine with him the day after 
the coronation, in Richmond Park, " where," says the letter of 
the Under-Secretary, "his Lordship will invite the Duke of 
York and a few other Jacobites to meet you." All this being 
made known to the tenant of Mount-Benger, he wrote to Scott, 
as he says, " with the tear in his eye," to signify, that if he 
went to London he must miss attending the great annual Bor- 
der fair, held on St. Boswell's Green, on the 18th of every 
July ; and that his absence from that meeting so soon after 
entering upon business as a store-farmer, would be considered 
by his new compeers as highly imprudent and discreditable. 
" In short," James concludes, " the thing is impossible. But 
as there is no man in his Majesty's dominions admires his 
great talents for government, and the energy and dignity of 
his administration, so much as I do, I will write something at 
home, and endeavour to give it you before you start." The 
Shepherd probably expected that these pretty compliments 
would reach the royal ear ; but however that may have been, 
his own Muse turned a deaf ear to him — at least I never heard 
of anything that he wrote on this occasion. Scott embarked 
without him, on board a new steam-ship called the City of Edin- 
burgh, which, as he suggested to the master, ought rather to 
have been christened the New Reekie. 

On the day after the coronation, Sir Walter addressed a 
letter descriptive of the whole ceremonial to Ballantyne, who 
published it in his newspaper. It has been since reprinted 
frequently : and will probably possess considerable interest for 
the student of English history and manners in future times ; 
for the two next coronations were conducted on a vastly 
inferior scale of splendour and expense — and the precedent 
of curtailment in any such matters is now seldom neglected. 

At the close of that brilliant scene, he received a mark of 
homage to his genius which delighted him not less than Laird 
Nippy's reverence for the Sheriff's Knoll, and the Sheffield 
cutler's dear acquisition of his signature on a visiting ticket. 
Missing his carriage, he had to return home on foot from West- 
minster, after the banquet — that is to say, between two or three 



CORONATION OF GEORGE IV. 383 

o'clock in the morning ; — when he and a young gentleman his 
companion found themselves locked in the crowd, somewhere 
near Whitehall, and the bustle and tumult were such that his 
friend was afraid some accident might happen to the lame limb. 
A space for the dignitaries was kept clear at that point by the 
Scots Greys. Sir Walter addressed a serjeant of this celebrated 
regiment, begging to be allowed to pass by him into the open 
ground in the middle of the street. The man answered shortly, 
that his orders were strict — that the thing was impossible. 
While he was endeavouring to persuade the serjeant to relent, 
some new wave of turbulence approached from behind, and his 
young companion exclaimed in a loud voice, " Take care, Sir 
Walter Scott, take care ! " The stalwart dragoon, on hearing 
the name, said, "What ! Sir Walter Scott ? He shall get through 
anyhow!" He then addressed the soldiers near him — "Make 
room, men, for Sir Walter Scott, our illustrious countryman ! " 
The men answered, " Sir Walter Scott ! — God bless him ! " — 
and he was in a moment within the guarded line of safety. 

" I saw Sir Walter again," says Allan Cunningham, " when 
he attended the coronation. In the meantime his bust had 
been wrought in marble, and the sculptor desired to take the 
advantage of his visit to communicate such touches of expres- 
sion or lineament as the new material rendered necessary. 
This was done with a happiness of eye and hand almost magi- 
cal : for five hours did the poet sit, or stand, or walk, while 
Chantrey's chisel was passed again and again over the marble, 
adding something at every touch. 'Well, Allan,' he said, 'were 
you at the coronation? it was a splendid sight.' — 'No, Sir 
Walter,' I answered, — ' places were dear and ill to get : I am 
told it was magnificent : but having seen the procession of 
King Crispin at Dumfries, I was satisfied.' Scott laughed 
heartily. — ' That's not a bit better than Hogg,' he said. ' He 
stood balancing the matter whether to go to the coronation or 
the fair of Saint Boswell — and the fair carried it.' During 
this conversation, Mr. Bolton the engineer came in. Some- 
thing like a cold acknowledgment passed between the poet and 
him. On his passing into an inner room, Scott said, ' I am 
afraid Mr. Bolton has not forgot a little passage that once took 
place between us. We met in a public company, and in reply 
to the remark of some one, he said, " That's like the old saying, 
— in every quarter of the world you will find a Scot, a rat, and 
a Newcastle grindstone." This touched my Scotch spirit, and 
I said, " Mr. Bolton, you should have added — and a Brum- 
magem button." There was a laugh at this, and Mr. Bolton 



384 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

replied, " We make something better in Birmingham than but- 
tons — we make steam-engines, sir." — 'I like Bolton/ con- 
tinued Sir Walter ; l he is a brave man, — and who can dislike 
the brave ? He shewed this on a remarkable occasion. He 
had engaged to coin for some foreign prince a large quantity of 
gold. This was found out by some desperadoes, who resolved 
to rob the premises, and as a preliminary step tried to bribe 
the porter. The porter was an honest fellow, — he told Bolton 
that he was offered a hundred pounds to be blind and deaf next 
night. Take the money, was the answer, and I shall protect 
the place. Midnight came — the doors, secured with patent 
locks, opened as of their own accord — and three men with 
dark lanterns entered and went straight to the gold. Bolton 
had prepared some flax steeped in turpentine — he dropt fire 
upon it, — a sudden light filled all the place, and with his as- 
sistants he rushed forward on the robbers ; the leader saw in 
a moment he was betrayed, turned on the porter, and shooting 
him dead, burst through all obstruction, and with an ingot of 
gold in his hand, scaled the wall and escaped.' ' That is quite 
a romance in robbing,' I said ; and I had nearly said more, for 
the cavern scene and death of Meg Merrilees rose in my mind; 
— perhaps the mind of Sir Walter was taking the direction of 
the Solwav too, for he said, 'How long have you been from 
Nithsdale ? "' 

Sir F. Chantrey presented the bust, of which Mr. Cunning- 
ham speaks, to Sir Walter himself; by whose remotest de- 
scendants it will undoubtedly be held in additional honour 
on that account. The poet had the further gratification of 
learning that three copies were executed in marble before the 
original quitted the studio: One for Windsor Castle — a second 
for Apsley House — and a third for the friendly sculptor's 
own private collection. The casts of this bust have since been 
multiplied beyond all numeration. Some years later Scott 
gave Chantrey some more sittings: and a second bust, rather 
graver in the expression, was then produced for Sir Robert 
Peel's gallery at Drayton. 

When Sir Walter returned from London, he brought with 
him the detailed plans of Mr. Atkinson for the completion 
of his house at Abbotsf ord ; — which, however, did not extend 
to the gateway or the beautiful screen between the court and 
the garden — for these graceful parts of the general design 
were conceptions of his own, reduced to shape by the skill of 
the Messrs. Smith of Darnick. It would not, indeed, be easy 
for me to apportion rightly the constituent members of the 



CHIEFS WOOD. 385 

whole edifice ; — throughout there were numberless consulta- 
tions with Mr. Blore, Mr. Terry, and Mr. Skene, as well as 
with Mr. Atkinson — and the actual builders placed consider- 
able inventive talents, as well as admirable workmanship, at 
the service of their friendly employer. Every preparation 
was now made by them, and the foundations might have been 
set about without farther delay ; but he was very reluctant to 
authorise the demolition of the rustic porch of the old cottage, 
with its luxuriant overgrowth of roses and jessamines; and, 
in short, could not make up his mind to sign the death-warrant 
of his favourite bower until winter had robbed it of its beau- 
ties. He then made an excursion from Edinburgh, on purpose 
to be present at its downfall — saved as many of the creepers 
as seemed likely to survive removal, and planted them with 
his own hands about a somewhat similar porch, erected ex- 
pressly for their reception, at his daughter Sophia's little 
cottage of Chiefswood. 

There my wife and I spent this summer and autumn of 
1821 — the first of several seasons which will ever dwell on 
my memory as the happiest of my life. We were near enough 
Abbotsford to partake as often as we liked of its brilliant 
society; yet could do so without being exposed to the worry 
and exhaustion of spirit which the daily reception of new 
comers entailed upon all the family except Sir Walter him- 
self. But, in truth, even he was not always proof against the 
annoyances connected with such a style of open-house-keeping. 
Even his temper sunk sometimes under the solemn applauses 
of learned dulness, the vapid raptures of painted and peri- 
wigged dowagers, the horseleech avidity with which underbred 
foreigners urged their questions, and the pompous simpers of 
condescending magnates. When sore beset at home in this 
way, he would every now and then discover that he had some 
very particular business to attend to on an outlying part of 
his estate, and craving the indulgence of his guests overnight, 
appear at the cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were 
astir in the morning. The clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the 
yelping of Mustard and Spice, and his own joyous shout of 
reveillee under our windows, were the signal that he had burst 
his toils, and meant for that day to " take his ease in his inn." 
On descending, he was to be found seated with all his dogs 
and ours about him, under a spreading ash that overshadowed 
half the bank between the cottage and the brook, pointing the 
edge of his woodman's axe for himself, and listening to Tom 
Purdie's lecture touching the plantation that most needed thin- 
2c 



386 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

ning. After breakfast, lie would take possession of a dressing- 
room upstairs, and write a chapter of The Pirate ; and then, 
having made up and despatched his packet for the printer, 
away to join Purclie wherever the foresters were at work — 
and sometimes to labour among them strenuously himself — 
until it was time either to rejoin his own party at Abbotsford, 
or the quiet circle of the cottage. — When his guests were few 
and friendly, he often made them come over and meet him at 
Chiefswood in a body towards evening, and surely he never 
appeared to more amiable advantage than when helping his 
young people with their little arrangements upon such occa- 
sions. He was ready with all sorts of devices to supply the 
wants of a narrow establishment ; he used to delight particu- 
larly in sinking the wine in a well under the brae ere he 
went out, and hauling up the basket just before dinner was 
announced — this primitive process being, he said, what he 
had always practised when a young housekeeper — and, in 
his opinion, far superior in its results to any application of 
ice ; and, in the same spirit, whenever the weather was suffi- 
ciently genial, he voted for dining out-of-doors altogether, 
which at once got rid of the inconvenience of very small 
rooms, and made it natural and easy for the gentlemen to 
help the ladies, so that the paucity of servants went for 
nothing. Mr. Eose used to amuse himself with likening the 
scene and the party to the closing act of one of those little 
French dramas, where " Monsieur le .Comte " and " Madame la 
Comtesse " appear feasting at a village bridal under the trees ; 
but in truth, our " M. le Comte " was only trying to live over 
again for a few simple hours his own old life of Lasswade. 

When circumstances permitted, he usually spent one even- 
ing at least in the week at our little cottage ; and almost as 
frequently he did the like with the Fergussons, to whose table 
he could bring chance visitors, when he pleased, with equal 
freedom as to his daughter's. Indeed it seemed to be much a 
matter of chance, any fine day when there had been no alarm- 
ing invasion of the Southron, whether the three families (which, 
in fact, made but one) should dine at Abbotsford, at Huntley 
Burn, or at Chiefswood ; and at none of them was the party 
considered quite complete, unless it included also Mr. Laidlaw. 
Death has laid a heavy hand upon that circle — as happy a 
circle I believe as ever met. Bright eyes now closed in dust, 
gay voices for ever silenced, seem to haunt me as I write. 

During several weeks of that summer Scott had under his 
roof Mr. William Erskine and two of his daughters ; this being, 



VISIT OF WILLIAM ERSKINE. 387 

I believe, their first visit to Tweedside since the death of Mrs. 
Erskine in September 1819. He had probably made a point 
of having his friend with him at this particular time, because 
he was desirous of having the benefit of his advice and cor- 
rections from day to day as he advanced in the composition of 
The Pirate — with the localities of which romance the Sheriff 
of Orkney and Zetland was of course thoroughly familiar. At 
all events, the constant and eager delight with which Erskine 
watched the progress of the tale has left a deep impression on 
my memory ; and indeed I heard so many of its chapters first 
read from the MS. by him, that I can never open the book now 
without thinking I hear his voice. Sir Walter used to give 
him at breakfast the pages he had written that morning ; and 
very commonly, while he was again at work in his study, 
Erskine would walk over to Chiefswood, that he might have 
the pleasure of reading them aloud to my wife and me under 
our favourite tree, before the packet had to be sealed up for 
Edinburgh. I cannot paint the pleasure and the pride with 
which he acquitted himself on such occasions. The little arti- 
fice of his manner was merely superficial, and was wholly for- 
gotten as tender affection and admiration, fresh as the impulses 
of childhood, glistened in his eye, and trembled in his voice. 

Erskine was, I think, the only man in whose society Scott 
took great pleasure, during the more vigorous part of his life, 
that had neither constitution nor inclination for any of the 
rough bodily exercises in which he himself delighted. The 
Counsellor (as the survivors of The Mountain always called 
him) was a little man of feeble make, who seemed unhappy 
when his pony got beyond a foot-pace, and had never, I should 
suppose, addicted himself to any out-of-door sport whatever. 
He would, I fancy, have as soon thought of slaying his own 
mutton as of handling a fowling-piece; he used to shudder 
when he saw a party equipped for coursing, as if murder were 
in the wind ; but the cool meditative angler was in his eyes 
the abomination of abominations. His small elegant features, 
hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, were the index of the quick 
sensitive gentle spirit within. He had the warm heart of a 
woman, her generous enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses. 
A beautiful landscape, or a fine strain of music, would send 
the tears rolling down his cheek ; and though capable, I have 
no doubt, of exhibiting, had his duty called him to do so, the 
highest spirit of a hero or a martyr, he had very little command 
over his nerves amidst circumstances such as men of ordinary 
mould (to say nothing of iron fabrics like Scott's) regard with 



388 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

indifference. He would dismount to lead his horse down what 
his friend hardly perceived to be a descent at all ; grew pale 
at a precipice ; and, unlike the White Lady of Avenel, would 
go a long way round for a bridge. 

Erskine had as yet been rather unfortunate in his profes- 
sional career, and thought a sheriffship by no means the kind 
of advancement due to his merits, and which his connexions 
might naturally have secured for him. These circumstances 
had at the time when I first observed him tinged his demean- 
our ; he had come to intermingle a certain wayward snappish- 
ness now and then with his forensic exhibitions, and in private 
seemed inclined (though altogether incapable of abandoning 
the Tory party) to say bitter things of people in high places : 
but, with these exceptions, never was benevolence towards all 
the human race more lively and overflowing than his evidently 
was, even when he considered himself as one who had reason 
to complain of his luck in the world. Now, however, these 
little asperities had disappeared ; one great real grief had cast 
its shadow over him, and submissive to the chastisement of 
Heaven, he had no longer any thoughts for the petty misusage 
of mankind. Meanwhile he shrunk from the collisions of 
general society, and lived almost exclusively in his own little 
circle of intimates. His conversation, though somewhat pre- 
cise and finical on the first impression, was rich in knowledge. 
His literary ambition, active and aspiring at the outset, had 
long before this time merged in his profound veneration for 
Scott; but he still read a great deal, and did so as much I 
believe with a view of assisting Scott by hints and suggestions, 
as for his own amusement. He had much of his friend's tact 
in extracting the picturesque from old, and, generally speaking, 
dull books ; and in bringing out his stores he often shewed a 
great deal of quaint humour and sly wit. Scott, on his side, 
respected, trusted, and loved him, much as an affectionate hus- 
band does the wife who gave him her heart in youth, and thinks 
his thoughts rather than her own in the evening of life ; he 
soothed, cheered, and sustained Erskine habitually. I do not 
believe a more entire and perfect confidence ever subsisted 
than theirs was and always had been in each other ; and to 
one who had duly observed the creeping jealousies of human 
nature, it might perhaps seem doubtful on which side the bal- 
ance of real nobility of heart and character, as displayed in 
their connexion at the time of which I am speaking, ought to 
be cast. 

In the course of a few months more, Sir Walter had the 



THE NOVELIST'S LIBRARY. 389 

great satisfaction of seeing Erskine at length promoted to a 
seat on the Bench of the Court of Session, by the title of Lord 
Kiimedder; and his pleasure was enhanced doubtless by the 
reflection that his friend, owed this elevation very much, if not 
mainly, to his own unwearied exertions on his behalf. He 
writes thus on the occasion to Joanna Baillie : — " There is a 
degree of melancholy attending the later stages of a barrister's 
profession, which, though no one cares for sentimentalities 
attendant on a man of fifty or thereabout, in a rusty black 
bombazine gown, are not the less cruelly felt : their business 
sooner or later fails, for younger men will work cheaper, and 
longer, and harder — besides that the cases are few, compara- 
tively, in which senior counsel are engaged, and it is not eti- 
quette to ask any one in that advanced age to take the whole 
burden of a cause. Insensibly, without decay of talent, and 
without losing the public esteem, there is a gradual decay of 
employment, which almost no man ever practised thirty years 
without experiencing; and thus the honours and dignities oi 
the Bench, so hardly earned, and themselves leading but to 
toils of another kind, are peculiarly desirable. Erskine would 
have sat there ten years ago, but for wretched intrigues." 

In August appeared the volume of the Novelist's Library, 
containing Scott's Life of Smollett; and it being now ascer- 
tained that John Ballantyne had died a debtor, the editor 
offered to proceed with this series of prefaces, on the footing 
that the whole profits of the work should go to his widow. 
Mr. Constable, whose own health was now beginning to break, 
had gone southwards in quest of more genial air, and was 
residing near London when he heard of this proposition. He 
immediately wrote to me, entreating me to represent to Sir 
Walter that the undertaking, having been coldly received at 
first, was unlikely to grow in favour if continued on the same 
plan — that in his opinion the bulk of the volumes, and the 
small type of their text, had been unwisely chosen, for a work 
of mere entertainment, and could only be suitable for one of 
reference ; that Ballantyne's Novelist's Library, therefore, 
ought to be stopped at once, and another in a lighter shape, to 
range with the late collected edition of the first series of the 
Waverley Romances, announced with his own name as publisher 
and Scott's as editor. He proposed at the same time to com- 
mence the issue of a Select Library of English Poetry, with 
prefaces and a few notes by the same hand ; and calculating 
that each of these collections should extend to twenty-five 
volumes, and that the publication of both might be concluded 



390 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

within two years — " The writing of the prefaces, &c. forming 
perhaps an occasional relief from more important labours " ! — 
the bookseller offered to pay their editor L.6000, a small por- 
tion of which sum, as he hinted, would undoubtedly be more 
than Mrs. John Ballantyne could ever hope to derive from the 
prosecution of her husband's last publishing adventure. Vari- 
ous causes combined to prevent the realisation of these mag- 
nificent projects. Scott now, as at the beginning of his career, 
had views about what a collection of English Poetry shoidd be, 
in which even Constable could not be made to concur ; and one 
of his letters to Lady Louisa Stuart sufficiently explains the 
coldness with which he regarded further attempts upon our 
Elder Novelists. The Ballantyne Library crept on to the 
tenth volume, and was then dropped abruptly ; and the double 
negotiation with Constable was never renewed. 

Lady Louisa had not, I fancy, read Scott's Lives of the 
Novelists until, some years after this time, they were collected 
into two little piratical duodecimos by a Parisian bookseller ; and 
on her then expressing her admiration of them, together with 
her astonishment that the speculation of which they formed a 
part should have attracted little notice of any sort, he answered 
as follows : — "I am delighted they afford any entertainment, 
for they are rather flimsily written, being done merely to oblige 
a friend : they were yoked to a great ill-conditioned, lubberly, 
double-columned book, which they were as useful to tug along 
as a set of fleas would be to draw a mail-coach. It is very 
difficult to answer your Ladyship's curious question concerning 
change of taste ; but whether in young or old, it takes place in- 
sensibly without the parties being aware of it. A grand-aunt 
of my own, Mrs. Keith of Eavelstone, who was a person of 
some condition, being a daughter of Sir John Swinton of Swin- 
ton — lived with unabated vigour of intellect to a very ad- 
vanced age. She was very fond of reading, and enjoyed it to 
the last of her long life. One day she asked me, when we 
happened to be alone together, whether I had ever seen Mrs. 
Belm's novels ? — I confessed the charge. — Whether I could 
get her a sight of them ? — I said, with some hesitation, I be- 
lieved I could ; but that I did not think she would like either 
the manners, or the language, which approached too near that 
of Charles II.'s time to be quite proper reading. ' Neverthe- 
less,' said the good old lady, ' I remember them being so much 
admired, and being so much interested in them myself, that I 
wish to look at them again.' To hear was to obey. So I sent 
Mrs. Aphra Behn, curiously sealed up, with ' private and con- 



LIVES OF THE NOVELISTS. 391 

fidential ' on the packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next 
time I saw her afterwards, she gave me back Aphra, properly 
wrapped up, with nearly these words : — ' Take back your 
bonny Mrs. Behn ; and, if you will take my advice, put her in 
the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first 
novel. But is it not,' she said, ' a very odd thing that I, an 
old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself 
ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard 
read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of 
the first and most creditable society in London ? ' This, of 
course, was owing to the gradual improvement of the national 
taste and delicacy. The change that brings into and throws 
out of fashion particular styles of composition, is something of 
the same kind. It does not signify what the greater or less 
merit of the book is : — the reader, as Tony Lumpkin says, 
must be in a concatenation accordingly — the fashion, or the 
general taste, must have prepared him to be pleased, or put him 
on his guard against it. It is much like dress. If Clarissa 
should appear before a modern party in her lace ruffles and 
head-dress, or Lovelace in his wig, however genteelly powdered, 
I am afraid they would make no conquests ; the fashion which 
makes conquests of us in other respects, is very powerful in 
literary composition, and adds to the effect of some works, while 
in others it forms their sole merit." 

Among other miscellaneous work of this autumn, Scott 
amused some leisure hours with writing a series of " Private 
Letters," supposed to have been discovered in the repositories 
of, a Noble English Family, and giving a picture of manners in 
town and country during the early part of the reign of James I. 
These letters were printed as fast as he penned them, in a 
handsome quarto form, and he furnished the margin with a 
running commentary of notes, drawn up in the character of 
a disappointed chaplain, a keen Whig, or rather Radical, over- 
flowing on all occasions with spleen against Monarchy and 
Aristocracy. When the printing had reached the 72d page, 
however, he was told candidly by Erskine, by James Ballan- 
tyne, and also by myself, that, however clever his imitation of 
the epistolary style of the period in question, h'e was throwing 
away in these letters the materials of as good a romance as he 
had ever penned ; and a few days afterwards he said to me — 
patting Sibyl's neck till she danced under him — " You were 
all quite right; if the letters had passed for genuine they 
would have found favour only with a few musty antiquaries ; 
and if the joke were detected, there was not story enough to 



392 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

carry it off. I shall burn the sheets, and give you Bonny King 
Jamie and all his tail in the old shape, as soon as I can get 
Captain Goffe within view of the gallows." 

I think it must have been about the middle of October that 
he dropped the scheme of this fictitious correspondence. I well 
remember the morning that he began The Fortunes of Nigel. 
The day being destined for Newark Hill, I went over to Ab- 
botsford before breakfast, and found Mr. Terry walking about 
with his friend's master-mason'. While Terry and I were 
chatting, Scott came out, bareheaded, with a bunch of MS. in 
his hand, and said, " Well, lads, I've laid the keel of a new 
lugger this morning — here it is — be off to the waterside, and 
let me hear how you like it." Terry took the papers, and 
walking up and down by the river, read to me the first chapter 
of Nigel. He expressed great delight with the animated open- 
ing, and especially with the contrast between its thorough stir 
of London life, and a chapter about Noma of the Fitfulhead, 
in the third volume of The Pirate, which had been given to 
him in a similar manner the morning before. I could see that 
(according to the Sheriff's phrase) he smelt roast meat; here 
there was every prospect of a fine field for the art of Terryjica- 
tion. The actor, when our host met us returning from the 
haugh, did not fail to express his opinion that the new novel 
would be of this quality. Sir Walter, as he took the MS. from 
his hand, eyed him with a gay smile, in which genuine benevo- 
lence mingled with mock exultation, and then throwing him- 
self into an attitude of comical dignity, he rolled out, in the 
tones of John Kemble, one of the loftiest bursts of Ben Jon- 
son's Mammon — 

" Come on, sir. Now you set your foot on shore 

In Novo orbe Pertinax, my Surly, 1 

Again I say to thee aloud, Be rich, 
This day thou shalt have ingots. ' ' — 

This was another period of "refreshing the machine." Early 
in November, I find Sir Walter writing thus to Constable's 
partner, Mr. Cadell : — "I want two books, Malcolm's London 
Redivivus, or s,ome such name, and Derham's Artificial Clock- 
maker." [The reader of Nigel will understand these requests.] 
"All good luck to you, commercially and otherwise. I am 

1 The fun of this application of "my Surly" will not escape any one 
who remembers the kind and good-humoured Terry's power of assuming 
a peculiarly saturnine aspect. This queer grimness of look was invalu- 
able to the comedian ; and in private he often called it up when his heart 
was most cheerful. 



OTHER LITERARY WORKS. 393 

grown a shabby letter-writer, for my eyes are not so young 
as they were, and I grudge everything that does not go to 
press." 

Sir Walter concluded, before he went to town in November, 
another negotiation of importance with this house. They 
agreed to give for the remaining copyright of the four novels 
published between December 1819 and January 1821 — to wit, 
Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Abbot, and Kenil worth — the 
sum of five thousand guineas. The stipulation about not 
revealing the author's name, under a penalty of L.2000, was 
repeated. By these four novels, the fruits of scarcely more 
than twelve months' labour, he had already cleared at least 
L.10,000 before this bargain was completed. I cannot pretend 
to guess what the actual state of his pecuniary affairs was at 
the time when John Ballantyne's death relieved them from 
one great source of complication and difficulty. But I have 
said enough to satisfy every reader, that when he began the 
second, and far the larger division of his building at Abbots- 
ford, he must have contemplated the utmost sum it could cost 
him as a mere trifle in relation to the resources at his com- 
mand. He must have reckoned on clearing L.30,000 at least 
in the course of a couple of years by the novels written within 
such a period. The publisher of his Tales, who best knew 
how they were produced, and what they brought of gross 
profit, and who must have had the strongest interest in keep- 
ing the author's name untarnished by any risk or reputation 
of failure, would willingly, as we have seen, have given him 
L.6000 more within a space of two years for works of a less 
serious sort, likely to be despatched at leisure hours, without 
at all interfering with the main manufacture. But alas ! even 
this was not all. Messrs. Constable had such faith in the pro- 
spective fertility of his imagination, that they were by this 
time quite ready to sign bargains and grant bills for novels 
and romances to be produced hereafter, but of which the sub- 
jects and the names were alike unknown to them and to the 
man from whose pen they were to proceed. 1 A forgotten 
satirist well says : — 

"The active principle within 
Works on some brains the effect of gin ; " 

1 Mr. Cadell says: — "This device for raising the wind was the only 
real legacy left by John Ballantyne to his generous friend ; it was in- 
vented to make up for the bad book stock of the Hanover Street concern, 
which supplied so much good money for the passing hour." 



394 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

but in Sir Walter's case, every external influence combined to 
stir the flame, and swell the intoxication of restless exuberant 
energy. His allies knew indeed, what lie did not, that the 
sale of his novels was rather less than it had been in the days 
of Ivanhoe: and hints had sometimes been dropped to him 
that it might be well to try the effect of a pause. But he 
always thought — and James Ballantyne had decidedly the 
same opinion — that his best things were those which he threw 
off the most easily and swiftly ; and it was no wonder that his 
booksellers, seeing how immeasurably even his worst excelled 
in popularity, as in merit, any other person's best, should have 
shrunk from the experiment of a decisive damper. On the con- 
trary, they might be excused for from time to time flattering 
themselves, that if the books sold at less rate, this might be 
counterpoised by still greater rapidity of production. They 
could not make up their minds to cast the peerless vessel 
adrift ; and, in short, after every little whisper of prudential 
misgiving, echoed the unfailing burden of Ballantyne's song — 
to push on, hoisting more and more sail as the wind lulled. 

He was as eager to do as they could be to suggest — and 
this I well knew at the time. I had, however, no notion, until 
all his correspondence lay before me, of the extent to which 
he had permitted himself thus early to build on the chances 
of life, health, and continued popularity. Before The Fort- 
unes of Nigel issued from the press, Scott had exchanged 
instruments, and received his booksellers' bills, for no less 
than four "works of fiction" — not one of them otherwise 
described in the deeds of agreement — to be produced in un- 
broken succession, each of them to fill at least three volumes, 
but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy-money 
in case any of them should run to four. And within two 
years all this anticipation had been wiped off by Peveril of 
the Peak, Quentin Durward, St. Ronan's Well, and Redgaunt- 
let ; and the new castle was by that time complete. But by 
that time the end also was approaching ! 

The splendid Romance of The Pirate was published in the 
beginning of December 1821 ; and the wild freshness of its 
atmosphere, the beautiful contrast of Minna and Brenda, and 
the exquisitely drawn character of Captain Cleveland, found 
the reception which they deserved. The work was analysed 
with remarkable care in the Quarterly Review — by a critic 
second to few, either in the manly heartiness of his sympathy 
with the felicities of genius, or in the honest acuteness of his 
censure in cases of negligence and confusion. This was the 



THE PIRATE. 395 

second of a series of articles in that Journal, conceived and 
executed in a tone widely different from those given to Waver- 
ley, Guy Mannering, and The Antiquary. I fancy Mr. Gifford 
had become convinced that he had made a grievous mistake 
in this matter, before he acquiesced in Scott's proposal about 
" quartering the child " in January 1816 ; and if he was fort- 
unate in finding a contributor able and willing to treat the 
rest of Father Jedediah's progeny with excellent skill, and in 
a spirit more accordant with the just and general sentiments 
of the public, we must also recognise a pleasing and honour- 
able trait of character in the frankness with which the recluse 
and often despotic editor now delegated the pen to Mr. Senior. 

On the 13th December, Sir Walter received a copy of Cain, 
as yet unpublished, from Lord Byron's bookseller, who had 
been instructed to ask whether he had any objection to hav- 
ing the " Mystery " dedicated to him. He says, in answer to 
Mr. Murray, — "I accept with feelings of great obligation the 
flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the 
very grand and tremendous drama of Cain. Some part of 
the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, 
whose tone will be adopted by others out of affectation or 
envy. But then they must condemn the Paradise Lost, if 
they have a mind to be consistent. The fiend-like reasoning 
and bold blasphemy of the fiend and of his pupil lead exactly 
to the point which was to be expected — the commission of 
the first murder, and the ruin and despair of the perpetrator." 
Such was Scott's opinion of the drama which, when pirated, 
Lord Eldon refused to protect. It may be doubted if the 
great Chancellor had ever read Paradise Lost. 

Whoever reads Scott's letters to Terry might naturally sup- 
pose that during this winter his thoughts were almost exclu- 
sively occupied with the rising edifice on Tweedside. The pains 
he takes about every trifle of arrangement, exterior and inte- 
rior, is truly most remarkable : it is not probable that many 
idle lords or lairds ever look half so much about such matters. 
But his literary industry was all the while unresting. His 
Nigel was completed by April 1822. He had edited Lord 
Fountainhall's Chronological Notes, and several other anti- 
quarian publications. Nor had he neglected a promise of the 
summer before to supply Miss Baillie with a contribution for 
a volume of miscellaneous verse, which she had undertaken 
to compile for the benefit of a friend in distress. With that 
view he now produced — and that, as I well remember, in the 
course of two rainy mornings at Abbotsford — the dramatic 



396 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

sketch of Haliclon Hill ; but on concluding it, he found that 
he had given it an extent quite incompatible with his friend's 
arrangements for her charitable picnic. He therefore cast 
about for another subject likely to be embraced in smaller 
compass ; and the Blair-Adam meeting of the next June sup- 
plied him with one in Macduff's Cross. Meantime, on hearing 
a whisper about Halidon Hill, Constable's junior partner, with- 
out seeing the MS., forthwith tendered L.1000 for the copy- 
right — the same sum that had appeared almost irrationally 
munificent, when offered in 1807 for the embryo Marmion. 
It was accepted, and a letter about to be quoted will shew 
how well the head of the firm was pleased with this wild 
bargain. 

The Nigel was published on the 30th of May 1822; and 
was, I need not say, hailed as ranking in the first class of 
Scott's romances. Indeed, as a historical portraiture, his of 
James I. stands forth pre-eminent, and almost alone ; nor, per- 
haps, in reperusing these novels deliberately as a series, does 
any one of them leave so complete an impression, as the pict- 
ure of an age. It is, in fact, the best commentary on the old 
English drama — hardly a single picturesque point of manners 
touched by Ben Jonson and his contemporaries but has been 
dovetailed into this story, and all so easily and naturally, as 
to form the most striking contrast to the historical romances 
of authors who cram, as the schoolboys phrase it, and then set 
to work oppressed and bewildered with their crude and un- 
digested burden. 

On the day after the publication, Constable, then near Lon- 
don, wrote thus to the author : — "I was in town yesterday, 
and so keenly were the people devouring my friend Jingling 
Geordie, that I actually saw them reading it in the streets as 
they passed along. I assure you there is no exaggeration in 
this. A new novel from the Author of Waverley puts aside 
— in other words, puts down for the time — every other literary 
performance. The smack Ocean, by which the new work was 
shipped, arrived at the wharf on Sunday ; the bales were got 
out by one on Monday morning, and before half-past ten o'clock 
7000 copies had been dispersed ! I was truly happy to hear of 
Halidon Hill, and of the satisfactory arrangements made for 
its publication. I wish I had the power of prevailing with 
you to give us a similar production every three months ; and 
that our ancient enemies on this side the Border might not 
have too much their own way, perhaps your next dramatic 
sketch might be Bannockburn. It would be presumptuous in 



THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL. 397 

me to point out subjects — [had lie quite forgotten the Lord 
of the Isles ?] — but you know my craving to be great, and I 
cannot resist mentioning here that I should like to see a battle 
of Hastings — a Cressy — a Bosworth field — and many more." 
— The Nigel was just launched — Constable knew that Peveril 
of the Peak was already on the stocks : yet see how quietly he 
suggests that a little pinnace of the Halidon class might easily 
be rigged out once a quarter by way of diversion, and thus add 
another L.4000 per annum to the L.10,000 or L.15,000, on which 
all parties counted as the sure yearly profit of the three-deckers 
in fore ! But Constable, during that residence in England, was 
in the habit of writing every week or two to Sir Walter, and 
his letters are all of the same complexion. The ardent book- 
seller's brain seems to have been well-nigh unsettled ; and I 
have often thought that the foxglove which he then swallowed 
(his complaint being a threatening of water in the chest) might 
have had a share in the extravagant excitement of his mind. 
Occasionally, however, he enters on details, as to which, or at 
least as to Sir Walter's share in them, there could not have 
been any mistake; and these were, it must be owned, of a 
nature well calculated to nourish and sustain in the author's 
fancy a degree of almost mad exhilaration, near akin to his 
publisher's own predominant mood. In a letter of the ensuing 
month, for example, after returning to the progress of Peveril 
of the Peak, under 10,000 copies of which (or nearly that num- 
ber) Ballantyne's presses were now groaning, and glancing 
gaily to the prospect of their being kept regularly employed 
to the same extent until three other novels, as yet unchris- 
tened, had followed Peveril, he adds a summary of what was 
then, had just been, or was about to be, the amount of occu- 
pation furnished to the same office by reprints of older works 
of the same pen; — "a summary," he exclaims, "to which I 
venture to say there will be no rival in our day ! " And well 
might Constable say so ; for the result is, that James Ballan- 
tyne and Co. had just executed, or were on the eve of execut- 
ing, by his order — 

" A new edition of Sir W. Scott's Poetical Works, in 10 

vols, (miniature) 5000 copies. 

Novels and Tales, 12 vols, ditto, . . . 5000 — 

Historical Romances, 6 vols, ditto, . . . 5000 — 

Poetry from Waverley, &c. 1 vol. 12mo. . 5000 — 

Paper required, 7772 reams. 

Volumes produced from Ballantyne's press, . 145,000 ! " 



398 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

To which we may safely add from 30,000 to 40,000 volumes 
more as the immediate produce of the author's daily industry 
within the space of twelve months. The scale of these opera- 
tions was, without question, enough to turn any bookseller's 
wits ; — Constable's, in his soberest hours, was as inflammable 
a head-piece as ever sat on the shoulders of a poet ; and his 
ambition, in truth, had been moving pari passu, during several 
of these last stirring and turmoiling years, with that of his 
poet. He, too, as I ought to have mentioned ere now, had, 
like a true Scotchman, concentrated his dreams on the hope 
of bequeathing to his heir the name and dignity of a lord of 
acres ; he, too, had considerably before this time purchased a 
landed estate in his native county of Fife ; he, too, I doubt 
not, had, while Abbotsford was rising, his own rural castle in 
petto ; and alas ! * for " Archibald Constable of Balniel " also, 
and his overweening intoxication of worldly success, Fortune 
had already begun to prepare a stern rebuke. 

I must pass on to a different excitement — that of the King's 
visit to his northern dominions in the autumn of 1822. Before 
this time no Prince of the House of Hanover was known to 
have touched the soil of Scotland, except one, whose name had 
ever been held there in universal detestation — the cruel con- 
queror of Culloden, — "the butcher Cumberland." Now that 
the very last dream of Jacobitism had expired with the Cardi- 
nal of York, there could be little doubt that all the northern 
Tories, of whatever shade of sentiment, would concur to give 
their lawful Sovereign a greeting of warm and devoted respect ; 
but the feelings of the Liberals towards George IV. personally 
had been unfavourably tinctured, in consequence of several 
incidents in his history — above all — (speaking of the mass of 
population addicted to that political creed) — the unhappy dis- 
sensions and scandals which had terminated, as it were but 
yesterday, in the trial of his Queen. On the whole it was, in 
the opinion of cool observers, a very doubtful experiment, 
which the new, but not young, king had resolved trying. That 
he had been moved to do so in a very great measure, both 
directly and indirectly, by Scott, there can be no question ; and 
I believe it will be granted by all who recall the particulars as 
they occurred, that his Majesty mainly owed to Scott's personal 
influence, authority, and zeal, the more than full realisation 
of the highest hopes he could have indulged on the occasion 
of this progress. 

Whether all the arrangements which Sir Walter dictated or 
enforced, were conceived in the most accurate taste, is a differ- 



VISIT OF THE KING. 399 

ent question. It appeared to be very generally thought, when 
the first programmes were issued, that kilts and bagpipes 
were to occupy a great deal too much space. With all respect 
for the generous qualities which the Highland clans have often 
exhibited, it was difficult to forget that they had always consti- 
tuted a small, and almost always an unimportant part of the 
Scottish population; and when one reflected how miserably 
their numbers had of late years been reduced in consequence of 
the selfish and hard-hearted policy of their landlords, it almost 
seemed as if there was a cruel mockery in giving so much 
prominence to their pretensions. But there could be no ques- 
tion that they were picturesque — and their enthusiasm was too 
sincere not to be catching ; so that by and by even the coolest- 
headed Sassenach felt his heart, like John of Argyle's, " warm 
to the tartan ; " and high and low were in the humour, not only 
to applaud, but each, according to his station, to take a share 
in what might really be described as a sort of grand terryfica- 
tion of the Holyrood chapters in Waverley ; — George IV., anno 
cetatis 60, being well contented to enact Prince Charlie, with 
the Great Unknown himself for his Baron Bradwardine, " ad 
exuenclas vel detrahendas caligas domini regis post battalliam." 

But Sir Walter had as many parts to play as ever tasked the 
Protean genius of his friend Mathews ; and he played them all 
with as much cordial energy as animated the exertions of any 
Henchman or Piper in the company. His severest duties, how- 
ever, were those of stage-manager, and under these I sincerely 
believe any other human being's temper would very soon have 
given way. The magistrates, bewildered with the rush of 
novelty, threw themselves on him for advice about the merest 
trifles ; and he had to arrange everything, from the order of a 
procession to the embroidering of a cross. Ere the green-room 
in Castle Street had dismissed provosts and bailies, it was sure 
to be besieged by swelling chieftains, who could not agree on 
the relative positions their clans had occupied at Bannockburn, 
which they considered as constituting the authentic precedent 
for determining their own places, each at the head of his little 
theatrical tail, in the line of the King's escort between the Pier 
of Leith and the Canongate. It required all Scott's unwearied 
good humour, and imperturbable power of face, to hear in be- 
coming gravity the sputtering controversies of such fiery rivals, 
each regarding himself as a true potentate, the representative 
of princes as ancient as Bourbon ; and no man could have coaxed 
them into decent co-operation, except him whom all the High- 
landers, from the haughtiest Maclvor to the slyest Callum Beg, 



400 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

agreed in looking np to as the great restorer and blazoner of 
their traditionary glories. He had, however, in all this most 
delicate part of his administration, an admirable assistant in 
one who had also, by the direction of his literary talents, ac- 
quired no mean share of authority among the Celts — General 
David Stewart of Garth, the historian of the Highland Regi- 
ments. On Garth (seamed all over with the scars of Egypt 
and Spain) devolved the Toy-Captainship of the Celtic Club, 
already alluded to as an association of young civilians enthusi- 
astic for the promotion of the philabeg ; — and he drilled and 
conducted that motley array in such style, that they formed, 
perhaps, the most splendid feature in the whole of this plaided 
panorama. But he, too, had a potential voice in the conclave 
of rival chieftains, — and with the able backing of this honoured 
veteran, Scott succeeded finally in assuaging all their heats, 
and reducing their conflicting pretensions to terms of truce, 
at least, and compromise. A ballad (now included in his 
works), wherein these magnates were most adroitly flattered, 
was understood to have had a considerable share of the merit 
in this peace-making ; but the constant hospitality of his table 
was a not less efficient organ of influence. 

About noon of the 14th of August, the royal yacht and the 
attendant vessels of war cast anchor in the Roads of Leith ; 
but although Scott's ballad-prologue had entreated the clergy to 
" warstle for a sunny day," the weather was so unpropitious 
that it was found necessary to defer the landing until the 
15th. In the midst of the rain, however, Sir Walter rowed 
off to the Royal George ; and, says the newspaper of the day, 
— "When his arrival alongside the yacht was announced to 
the King. — ' What ! ' exclaimed his Majesty, ' Sir Walter Scott ! 
The man in Scotland I most wish to see ! Let him come up.' " 
When he stepped on the quarter-deck, his Majesty called for 
a bottle of Highland whisky, and having drunk his health, 
desired a glass to be filled for him. Sir Walter, after draining 
his bumper, made a request that the King would condescend 
to bestow on him the glass out of which his Majesty had just 
drunk his health ; and this being granted, the precious Vessel 
was immediately wrapped up and carefully deposited in what 
he conceived to be the safest part of his dress. So he returned 
with it to Castle Street ; but — to say nothing at this moment 
of graver distractions — on reaching his house he found a 
guest established there of a sort rather different from the 
usual visitors of the time. The poet Crabbe, after repeatedly 
promising an excursion to the north, had at last arrived in the 



VISIT OF CBABBE. 401 

midst of these tumultuous preparations for the royal advent. 
Notwithstanding all such impediments, he found his quarters 
ready for him, and Scott entering, wet and hurried, embraced 
the venerable man with brotherly affection. The royal gift 
was forgotten — the ample skirt of the coat within which it 
had been packed, and which he had hitherto held cautiously 
in front of his person, slipped back to its more usual position 
— he sat down beside Crabbe, and the glass was crushed to 
atoms. His scream and gesture made his wife conclude that 
he had sat down on a pair of scissors or the like : but very little 
harm had been done except the breaking of the glass, of which 
alone he had been thinking. This was a damage not to be re- 
paired : as for the scratch that accompanied it, its scar was of 
no great consequence, as even when mounting the " cat-dath, 
or battle garment" of the Celtic Club, he adhered, like his 
hero Waverley, to the trews. 

By six o'clock next morning, Sir Walter, arrayed in the 
Garb of old Gaul (which he had of the Campbell tartan, in 
memory of one of his great-grandmothers), was attending a 
muster of these gallant Celts in the Queen-Street Gardens, 
where he had the honour of presenting them with a set of 
colours, and delivered a suitable exhortation, crowned with 
their rapturous applause. Some members of the Club, all of 
course in their full costume, were invited to breakfast with 
him. He had previously retired for a little to his library, and 
when he entered the parlour, Mr. Crabbe, dressed in the high- 
est style of professional neatness and decorum, with buckles 
in his shoes, and whatever was then considered as befitting an 
English clergyman of his years and station, was standing in 
the midst of half-a-dozen stalwart Highlanders, exchanging 
elaborate civilities with them in what was at least meant to be 
French. He had come into the room shortly before, without 
having been warned about such company, and hearing the 
party conversing together in an unknown tongue, the polite 
old man had adopted, in his first salutation, what he con- 
sidered as the universal language. Some of the Celts, on 
their part, took him for some foreign abbe or bishop, and 
were doing their best to explain to him that they were not 
the wild savages for which, from the startled glance he had 
thrown on their hirsute proportions, there seemed but too 
much reason to suspect he had taken them ; others, more per- 
spicacious, gave in to the thing for the joke's sake ; and there 
was high fun when Scott dissolved the charm of their stam- 
mering, by grasping Crabbe with one hand, and the nearest of 
2d 



402 LIFE OF SIR WALTEB SCOTT. 

these figures with the other, and greeted the whole group with 
the same hearty good-morning. 

Perhaps no Englishman of these recent days ever arrived in 
Scotland with a scantier stock of information about the coun- 
try and the people than (judging from all that he said, and 
more expressively looked) this illustrious poet had brought 
with him in August 1822. It seemed as if he had never for 
one moment conceived that the same island in which his 
peaceful parsonage stood, contained actually a race of men, 
and gentlemen too, owning no affinity with Englishmen either 
in blood or in speech, and still proud in wearing, whenever 
opportunity served, a national dress of their own, bearing 
considerably more resemblance to an American Indian's than 
to that of an old-fashioned divine from the Yale of Belvoir. 
But the aspect of the city on the loth was as new to the 
inhabitants as it could have been even to the Hector of Mus- 
ton: — every height and precipice occupied by military of the 
regular army, or by detachments of these more picturesque 
irregulars from beyond the Grampians — lines of tents, flags, 
and artillery, circling Arthur's Seat, Salisbury Crags, and the 
Calton Hill — and the old black Castle and its rock, wreathed 
in the smoke of repeated salvoes, while a huge banner royal, 
such as had not waved there since 1715, floated and flapped 
over all : — every street, square, garden, or open space below, 
paved with solid masses of silent expectants, except only 
where glittering lines of helmets marked the avenue guarded 
for the approaching procession. All captiousness of criti- 
cism sunk into nothing before the grandeur of this vision: 
and it was the same, or nearly so, on every subsequent 
day when the King chose to take part in the devised cere- 
monial. I forget where Sir Walter's place was on the loth ; 
but on one or other of these occasions I remember him seated 
in an open carriage, in the Highland dress, armed and accou- 
tred as heroically as Garth himself (who accompanied him), 
and evidently in a most bardish state of excitement, while 
honest Peter IMathieson managed as best he might four steeds 
of a fierier sort than he had usually in his keeping — though, 
perhaps, after all, he might be less puzzled with them than 
with the cocked-hat and regular London Jehu's flaxen wig, 
which he. for the first and last time, displayed during "the 
royal fortnight." 

It is, I believe, of the dinner of this loth August in Castle 
Street that Crabbe penned the following brief record in his 
Journal : — " Whilst it is fresh in my memorv. I should de- 



VISIT OF CEABBE. 403 

scribe the day which. I have just passed, but I do not believe 
an accurate description to be possible. What avails it to say, 
for instance, that there met at the sumptuous dinner, in all the 
costume of the Highlanders, the great chief himself, and officers 
of his company. This expresses not the singularity of appear- 
ance and manners — the peculiarities of men all gentlemen, 
but remote from our society — leaders of clans — joyous com- 
pany. Then we had Sir Walter Scott's national songs and 
ballads, exhibiting all the feelings of clanship. I thought it 
an honour that Glengarry even took notice of me, for there 
were those, and gentlemen too, who considered themselves 
honoured by following in his train. There were also Lord 
Errol, and the Macleod, and the Eraser, and the Gordon, and 
the Eergusson; and I conversed at dinner with Lady Glen- 
garry, and did almost believe myself a harper, or bard, rather 
— for harp I cannot strike ; and Sir Walter was the life and 
soul of the whole. It was a splendid festivity, and I felt I 
know not how much younger." 

In the glittering and tumultuous assemblages of that season, 
the elder bard was (to use one of his friend's favourite simili- 
tudes) very like a cow in a fremd loaning; and though Scott 
could never have been seen in colours more likely to excite 
admiration, Crabbe had hardly any opportunity of observing 
him in the everyday loveableness of his converse. Sir Walter's 
enthusiastic excitement about the kilts and the processions 
seemed at first utterly incomprehensible to him ; but by degrees 
he perceived and appreciated the dexterous management of 
prejudices and pretensions. He exclaims, in his Journal, — 
" What a keen discriminating man is my friend ! " But I shall 
ever regret that Crabbe did not see him at Abbotsford among 
his books, his trees, his own good simple peasants. They had, 
I believe, but one quiet walk together, and it was to the ruins 
of St. Anthony's Chapel and Muschat's Cairn, which the deep 
impression made on Crabbe by the Heart of Mid-Lothian had 
given him an earnest wish to see. I accompanied them ; and 
the hour so spent, in the course of which the fine old man gave 
us some most touching anecdotes of his early struggles, was 
a truly delightful contrast to the bustle and worry of miscel- 
laneous society which consumed so many of his few hours in 
Scotland. 

The King took up his residence at Dalkeith Palace; and 
here his dinner party almost daily included Sir Walter, who, 
however, appeared to have derived more deep-felt gratification 
from his Majesty's kind and paternal attention to his juvenile 



404: LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

host (the Duke of Buccleuch was at that time only in his six- 
teenth year), than from all the nattering condescension lavished 
on himself. From Dalkeith the King repaired to Holyrood- 
house two or three times, for the purposes of a levee or draw- 
ing-room. One Sunday he attended divine service in the 
Cathedral of St. Giles', when the decorum and silence pre- 
served by the multitudes in the streets, struck him as a most 
remarkable contrast to the rapturous excitement of his recep- 
tion on week-days ; and the scene was not less noticeable in 
the eyes of Crabbe, who says in his Journal, — " The silence 
of Edinburgh on the Sunday is in itself devout." 

There is in the armoury at Abbotsford a sword presented 
by Charles I. to the great Marquis of Montrose — with Prince 
Henry's arms and cypher on one side of the blade, and his own 
on the other. One day the late Duke of Montrose happened 
to sit next to Sir Walter, and complimented him on the vigor- 
ous muster of Border Yeomanry which Portobello Sands had 
exhibited that morning. " Indeed," said Scott, " there's scarcely 
a man left to guard our homesteads." — " I've a great mind," 
quoth the Duke, " to send a detachment of my tail to Abbots- 
ford to make prize of my ancestor's sword." — " Your Grace," 
says Sir Walter, drily, "is very welcome to try — but we're 
near Philiphaugh yonder." 

Another very splendid day was that of a procession from 
Holy rood to the Castle, whereof the whole ceremonial had 
obviously been arranged under Scott's auspices, for the pur- 
pose of calling up, as exactly as might be, the time-hallowed 
observance of "the Riding of the Parliament." Mr. Peel 
(then Secretary of State for the Home Department) was desir- 
ous of witnessing this procession privately, instead of taking a 
place in it, and he walked up the High Street accordingly in 
company with Scott, some time before the royal cavalcade was 
to get into motion. The Poet was as little desirous of attract- 
ing notice as the Secretary, but he was soon recognised — and 
his companion, when revisiting Scotland, after the lapse of 
fourteen years, expressed his lively remembrance of the enthu- 
siastic veneration with which Scott's person was then greeted 
by all classes of his countrymen. In proposing Sir Walter's 
memory at a public dinner given to him in Glasgow, in Decem- 
ber 1836, Sir Kobert Peel said, — "I had the honour of accom- 
panying his late Majesty as his Secretary of State, when he 
paid a visit to Edinburgh. I suppose there are many of you 
here who were present on that occasion, at that memorable 
scene, when the days of ancient chivalry were recalled — when 



ENTERTAINING THE KING. 405 

every man's friendship seemed to be confirmed — when men 
met for the first time, who had always looked to each other 
with distrust, and resolved in the presence of their Sovereign 
to forget their hereditary feuds and animosities. In the 
beautiful language of Dry den — 

' Men met each other with erected look — 
The steps were higher that they took ; 
Friends to congratulate their friends would haste, 
And long inveterate foes saluted as they pass'd.' 

Sir Walter Scott took an active lead in these ceremonies. On 
the day on which his Majesty was to pass from Holyroodhouse, 
he proposed to me to accompany him up the High Street, to 
see whether the arrangements were completed. I said to 
him — 'You are trying a dangerous experiment — you will 
never get through in privacy.' He said, ' They are entirely 
absorbed in loyalty.' But I was the better prophet : he was 
recognised from the one extremity of the street to the other, 
and never did I see such an instance of national devotion 
expressed." 

The King at his first levee diverted many, and delighted 
Scott, by appearing in the full Highland garb, — the same 
brilliant Stuart Tartans, so called, in which certainly no 
Stuart, except Prince Charles, had ever presented himself 
in the saloons of Holyrood. His Majesty's Celtic toilette had 
been carefully watched and assisted by the gallant Laird of 
Garth, who was not a little proud of the result of his dexter- 
ous manipulations of the royal plaid, and pronounced the King 
" a vera pretty man." And he did look a most stately and 
imposing person in that beautiful dress — but his satisfaction 
therein was cruelly disturbed, when he discovered, towering 
and blazing among and above the genuine Glengarries and 
Macleods and MacGregors, a figure even more portly than his 
own, equipped, from a sudden impulse of loyal ardour, in 
an equally complete set of the self-same conspicious Stuart 
tartans : — 

"He caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt — 
While throng' d the chiefs of every Highland clan 
To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman." 1 

In truth, this portentous apparition cast an air of ridicule 
and caricature over the whole of Sir Walter's Celtified pag- 
eantry. A sharp little bailie from Aberdeen, who had previ- 

1 Byron's Age of Bronze. 



406 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

ously made acquaintance with the worthy Guildhall Baronet, 
and tasted the turtle-soup of his voluptuous yacht, tortured 
him, as he sailed down the long gallery of Holyrood, by sug- 
gesting that, after all, his costume was not quite perfect. Sir 
William, who had been rigged out, as the auctioneer's adver- 
tisements say, " regardless of expense," exclaimed that he must 
be mistaken — begged he would explain his criticism — and as 
he spoke, threw a glance of admiration on a skene dhu (black 
knife), which, like a true "warrior and hunter of deer," he 
wore stuck into one of his garters. " Oo ay — oo ay," quoth 
the Aberdonian ; " the knife's a' right, mon ; but f aar's your 
speen ? " — (where's your spoon ?) Such was Scott's story — 
but whether he " gave it a cocked-hat and walking-cane," in 
the hope of restoring the King's good-humour, so grievously 
shaken by this heroical doppel-g anger, it is not very necessary 
to inquire. 

As in Hamlet, there was to be a play within the play ; and, 
by his Majesty's desire, William Murray's company performed 
in his presence the drama of Rob Roy. The audience were 
enchanted Avith the King's hearty laughter at Bailie Jarvie's 
jokes; — but I particularly remember his Majesty's shout at 
MaUie's "nane o' your Lunnan tricks." 

On the 24th the Magistrates entertained their Sovereign with 
a banquet in the Parliament House ; and Sir Walter Scott was 
invited to preside over one of the tables. But the most strik- 
ing homage (though apparently an unconscious one) that his 
genius received during this festive period, was, when the King, 
after proposing the health of the Magistrates, rose and said 
there was one toast more, and but one, in which he must re- 
quest the assembly to join him, — "I shall simply give you," 
said he, " The Chieftains and Clans of Scotland — and pros- 
perity to the Land of Cakes." So completely had this hallu- 
cination taken possession, that nobody seems to have been 
startled at the time by language which thus distinctly con- 
veyed his Majesty's impression that the marking and crowning 
glory of Scotland consisted in the Highland clans and their 
chieftains. 

Scott's early associations, and the prime labours and honours 
of his life, had been so deeply connected with the Highlands, 
that it was no wonder he should have taught himself to look 
on their clans and chiefs with almost as much affection and 
respect as if he had had more than a scantling of their blood 
in his veins. But it was necessary to be an eye-witness of this 
royal visit, in order to comprehend the extent to which he had 



ENERGY OF SCOTT. 407 

allowed his imagination to get the mastery over him as to all 
these matters ; and perhaps it was necessary to understand 
him thoroughly on such points, in his personal relations, feel- 
ings, and demeanour, before one could follow his genius to 
advantage in some of his most favoured and delightful walks 
of exertion. The strongest impression, however, which the 
whole affair left on my mind was, that I had never till then 
formed any just notion of his capacity for practical dealing 
and rule among men. I do not think he had much in common 
with the statesmen and diplomatists of his own age and coun- 
try ; but I am mistaken if Scott could not have played in other 
days either the Cecil or the Gondomar ; and I believe no man, 
after long and intimate knowledge of any other great poet, has 
ever ventured to say that he could have v conceived the possi- 
bility of any such parts being adequately filled on the active 
stage of the world, by a person in whom the powers of fancy 
and imagination had such predominant sway as to make him 
in fact live three or four lives habitually in place of one. I 
have known other literary men of energy perhaps as restless 
as his ; but all such have been entitled to the designation of 
busy bodies — busy almost exclusively about trifles, and, above 
all, supremely and constantly conscious of their own remark- 
able activity, and rejoicing and glorying in it. Whereas Scott, 
neither in literary labour nor in continual contact with the af- 
fairs of the world, ever did seem aware that he was making any 
very extraordinary exertion. The machine, thus gigantic in 
its impetus, moved so easily that the master had no perception 
of the obstructions it overcame — in fact, no measure for its 
power. Compared to him, all the rest of the poet species that 
I have chanced to observe nearly — with but one glorious ex- 
ception — have seemed to me to do little more than sleep 
through their lives — and at best to fill the sum with dreams ; 
and I am persuaded that, taking all ages and countries together, 
the rare examples of indefatigable energy, in union with serene 
self-possession of mind and character, such as Scott's, must 
be sought for in the roll of great sovereigns or great captains, 
rather than in that of literary genius. 

In the case of such renowned practical masters, it has been 
usual to account for their apparent calmness amidst the stir- 
ring troubles of the world, by imputing to them callousness 
of the affections. Perhaps injustice has been done by the 
supposition; but, at all events, hardly could any one extend 
it to the case of the placid man of the imaginative order ; — a 
great depicter of man and nature, especially, would seem to 



408 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

be, ex vi termini, a profound sympathiser with the passions of 
his brethren, with the weaknesses as well as with the strength 
of humanity. Such assuredly was Scott. His heart was as 
" ramm'd with life " (to use a phrase of Ben Jonson's) as his 
brain ; and I never saw him tried in a tenderer point than he 
was during the full whirl of splendour and gaiety that seemed 
to make every brain but his dizzy in the Edinburgh of August 
1822. 

Few things had ever given him so much pleasure as William 
Erskine's promotion to the Bench. It seemed to have restored 
his dearest friend to content and cheerfulness, and thus to 
have doubled his own sources of enjoyment. But Erskine's 
constitution had been shaken before he attained this dignity; 
and the anxious delicacy of his conscience rendered its duties 
oppressive and overwhelming. In a feeble state of body, and 
with a sensitive mind stretched and strained, a silly calumny, 
set afoot by some envious gossip, was sufficient literally to 
chase him out of life. On his return to Edinburgh about the 
20th of July, Scott found him in visible danger ; he did what- 
ever friendship could do to comfort and stimulate him; but 
all was in vain. Lord Kinnedder survived his elevation hardly 
half-a-year — and who that observed Scott's public doings dur- 
ing the three or four weeks I have been describing, could have 
suspected that he was daily and nightly the watcher of a death- 
bed, or the consoler of orphans ; striving all the while against 

' ' True earnest sorrows, rooted miseries, 
Anguish in grain, vexations ripe and blown ? " 

I am not aware that I ever saw him in such a state of dejection 
as he was when I accompanied him and his friend Mr. Thomas 
Thomson from Edinburgh to Queensferr}^, in attendance upon 
Lord Kinnedder's funeral. Yet that was one of the noisest 
days of the royal festival, and he had to plunge into some 
scene of high gaiety the moment after he returned. As we 
halted in Castle Street, Mr. Crabbe's mild, thoughtful face 
appeared at the window, and Scott said, on leaving me, — 
" Now for what -our old friend there puts down as the crown- 
ing curse of his poor player in the Borough — 

' To hide in rant the heart-ache of the night.' " 

The very few letters that he addressed to friends at a dis- 
tance during the King's stay, are chiefly occupied with Erskine. 
In one of them he savs : — "It would be rather difficult for 



DEATH OF ERSKINE. 409 

any one who has never lived much among my good country- 
people, to comprehend that an idle story of a love intrigue, a 
story alike base and baseless, should be the death of an inno- 
cent man of high character, high station, and well advanced in 
years. It struck into poor Erskine's heart and soul, however, 
quite as cruelly as any similar calumny ever affected a modest 
woman — he withered and sunk. There is no need that I 
should say peace be with him ! If ever a pure spirit quitted 
this vale of tears, it was William Erskine's. I must turn to 
and see what can be done about getting some pension for his 
daughters." 

The King's stay in Scotland was protracted until the 29th 
of August. He then embarked from the Earl of Hopetoun's 
magnificent seat on the Firth of Forth,* and Sir Walter had 
the gratification of seeing his Majesty, in the moment of de- 
parture, confer the honour of knighthood on two of his friends 
— both of whom, I believe, owed some obligation in this mat- 
ter to his good offices — namely, Captain Adam Eergusson, 
deputy-keeper of the Regalia, and Henry Raeburn, H.A., 
properly selected as the representative of the fine arts in Scot- 
land. This amiable man and excellent artist, however, did not 
long survive the receipt of his title. Sir Henry died on the 
8th of July 1823 — the last work of his pencil having been a 
portrait of Scott for Lord Montagu. 

On the eve of the King's departure he received a letter from 
Mr. Peel, saying: — "The King has commanded me to acquaint 
you that he cannot bid adieu to Scotland without conveying 
to you individually his warm personal acknowledgments. 
His Majesty well knows how many difficulties have been 
smoothed, and how much has been effected by your unremit- 
ting activity, by your knowledge of your countrymen, and by 
the just estimation in which they hold you. The King wishes 
to make you the channel of conveying to the Highland chiefs 
and their followers, who have given to the varied scene which 
we have witnessed so peculiar and romantic a character, his 
particular thanks for their attendance, and his warm approba- 
tion of their uniform deportment." 

Though Mr. Crabbe found it necessary to leave Scotland 
without seeing Abbotsford, this was not. the case with many 
less celebrated friends from the south, who had flocked to the 
Royal Festival. Sir Walter's house was, in his own phrase, 
" like a cried fair," during several weeks after the King's de- 
parture ; and as his masons were then in the highest activity, 
the tumult within doors and without was really perplexing. 



410 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

He says in his letters, that the excitement of the Edinburgh 
scenes had thrown him into a fever, and, I believe, it was very 
lucky that an eruption took place, which compelled him to 
keep his chamber for some days. 

Nor was an unusual influx of English pilgrims the only 
legacy of u the glorious days " of August. A considerable num- 
ber of persons who had borne a part in the ceremonies fancied 
that their exertions had entitled them to some substantial mark 
of approbation ; and post after post brought despatches from 
these enthusiasts, to him who was supposed to enjoy, as to 
matters of this description, the readiest access to the fountain 
of honour. To how many of these applications he accorded 
more than a civil answer I cannot tell ; but the Duke of York 
was too good a Jacobite not to grant favourable consideration 
to his request that one or two half-pay officers who had dis- 
tinguished themselves in the van of the Celts, might be re- 
placed in Highland regiments, and so reinvested with the 
untheatrical " Garb of old Gaul." Sir Walter had also a peti- 
tion of his own. This related to a certain gigantic piece of 
ordnance, celebrated in the history of the Scottish Jameses 
under the title of Jlons Meg, which had been removed from 
Edinburgh Castle to the Tower in 1746. When Scott next saw 
the King, after he had displayed his person on the chief bastion 
of the old fortress, he lamented the absence of Mons Meg on 
that occasion in language which his Majesty could not resist. 
There ensued a correspondence with the official guardians of 
Meg — among others, with the Duke of Wellington, then 
Master-General of the Ordnance, and though circumstances 
deferred her restoration, it was never lost sight of, and took 
place when the Duke was Prime Minister, in 1828. 

A more serious petition was a written one in which Sir Wal- 
ter expressed feelings in which I believe every class of his 
countrymen were disposed to concur with him cordially — and 
certainly none more so than George IV. himself. The object 
was the restoration of the peerages forfeited in consequence of 
the insurrections of 1715 and 1745 ; and the honourable fami- 
lies, in whose favour this liberal measure was soon afterwards 
adopted, appear to have vied with each other in the expression 
of their gratefulness for his exertions on their behalf. 

Early in October, he had another attack of illness. He says 
to Terry, in a letter fidl of details about silk-hangings, ebony- 
cabinets, and so forth : — " I have not been very well — a 
whoreson thickness of blood, and a depression of spirits, aris- 
ing from the loss of friends, have annoyed me muchj and 



PEVEBIL OF THE PEAK. 411 

Peveril will, I fear, smell of the apoplexy. I propose a good 
rally, however, and hope it will be a powerful effect. My idea 
is, entre nous, a Scotch archer in the French king's guard, tem- 
pore Louis XL, the most picturesque of all times." This is 
the first allusion to Quentin Durward and also the species of 
malady that ultimately proved fatal to Sir Walter Scott. He 
never mentioned to his family the symptoms which he here 
speaks of; but long before any serious apoplectic seizure oc- 
curred, it had been suspected by myself, and by others of his 
friends, that he had sustained slight attacks of that nature, and 
concealed them. The depression of spirits could not, however, 
have hung over him long. Peveril was completed, and some 
progress had also been achieved with Quentin Durward, before 
the year reached its close. Nor had he ceased to contemplate 
future labour with firmness and hopefulness. He, in October, 
received Constable's bills for another unnamed "work of fic- 
tion ; " and this was the last such work in which the great 
bookseller was destined to have any concern. The engage- 
ment was in fact that redeemed three years afterwards by 
Woodstock. 

Peveril of the Peak appeared in January 1823. Its recep- 
tion was somewhat colder than that of its three immediate 
predecessors. The rapidity of the Novelist's execution was 
put to a severe trial, from his adoption of so wide a canvas as 
was presented by a period of twenty busy years, and filled by 
so large and multifarious an assemblage of persons, not a few 
of them, as it were, struggling for prominence. Finella was 
an unfortunate conception ; what is good in it is not original, 
and the rest absurd and incredible. Even worse was that con- 
descension to the practice of vulgar romances, in his treatment 
of the trial scenes — scenes usually the very citadels of his 
strength — which outraged every feeling of probability with 
those who had studied the terrible tragedies of the Popish 
Plot, in the authentic records of, perhaps, the most disgrace- 
ful epoch in our history. The story is clumsy and perplexed ; 
the catastrophe (another signal exception to his rules) fore- 
seen from the beginning, and yet most inartificially brought 
about. All this is true ; and yet might not criticisms of the 
same sort be applied to half the masterpieces of Shakspeare ? . 
And did any dramatist — to say nothing of any other novelist 
— ever produce, in spite of all the surrounding bewilderment 
of the fable, characters more powerfully conceived, or, on the 
whole, more happily portrayed, than those (I name but a few) 
of Christian, Bridgenorth, Buckingham, and Chimnch ? — 



412 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

sketches more vivid than those of young Derby, Colonel Blood, 
and the keeper of Newgate ? 

Among the lounging barristers of the Outer-House in those 
days, Sir Walter, in the intervals of his duty as Clerk, often 
came forth and mingled much in the style of his own coeval 
Mountain. Indeed the pleasure he seemed to take in the soci- 
ety of his professional juniors, was one of the most remarkable, 
and certainly not the least agreeable features of his character 
at this period of his consummate honour and celebrity — but I 
should rather have said, perhaps, of young people generally, 
male or female, law or lay, gentle or simple. I used to think 
it was near of kin to another feature in him, his love of a 
bright light. It was always, I suspect, against the grain with 
him, when he did not even work at his desk with the sun full 
upon him. However, one morning soon after Peveril came 
out, one of our most famous wags (now famous for better 
things,) namely, Patrick Robertson, 1 commonly called by the 
endearing Scottish diminutive " Peter," observed that tall coni- 
cal white head advancing above the crowd towards the fire- 
place, where the usual roar of fun was going on among the 
briefless, and said, "Hush, boys, here comes old Peveril — I 
see the Peak." A laugh ensued, and the Great Unknown, as 
he withdrew from the circle after a few minutes' gossip, in- 
sisted that I should tell him what our joke upon his advent 
had been. When enlightened, being by that time half way 
across the " babbling hall " towards his own Division, he 
looked round with a sly grin, and said, between his teeth, 
"Ay, ay, my man, as weel Peveril o' the Peak ony day, as 
Peter o' the Painch " (paunch) — which, being transmitted to 
the brethren of the stove school, of course delighted all of them, 
except their portly Coryphaeus. But Peter's application stuck ; 
to his dying day, Scott was in the Outer-House Peveril of the 
Peak, or Old Peveril — and, by and by, like a good Cavalier, 
he took to the designation kindly. He was well aware that 
his own family and younger friends constantly talked of him 
under this sobriquet. Many a little note have I had from him 
(and so probably has Peter also), reproving, or perhaps encour- 
aging, Tory mischief, and signed, " Thine, Peveril." 

It was, perhaps, some inward misgiving towards the comple- 
tion of Peveril, that determined Scott to break new ground in 
his next novel ; and as he had before awakened a fresh inter- 

1 Mr. R. became Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1842, and a Judge 
by the style of Lord Robertson in 1843. His first (and successful) appear- 
ance as a Poet was in 1847. 



PEVEEIL OF THE PEAK. 413 

est by venturing on English scenery and history, try the still 
bolder experiment of a continental excursion. However this 
may have been, he was encouraged and strengthened by the 
return of his friend Skene, about this time, from a tour in 
France ; in the course of which he had kept an accurate and 
lively journal, and executed a vast variety of clever drawings, 
representing landscapes and ancient buildings, such as would 
have been most sure to interest Scott had he been the com- 
panion of his wanderings. Mr. Skene's MS. collections were 
placed at his disposal, and he took from one of their chapters 
the substance of the original Introduction to Quentin Durward. 
Yet still his difficulties in this new undertaking were frequent, 
and of a sort to which he had hitherto been a stranger. I 
remember observing him many times in the Advocates' Library 
poring over maps and gazetteers with care and anxiety. 

He was much amused with a mark of French admiration 
which reached him (opportunely enough) in February — one 
of the few such that his works seem to have brought him prior 
to the publication of Quentin Durward. He says to Constable, 
— "A funny Frenchman wants me to accept some champaign 
for a set of my works. I have writteu in answer that as my 
works cost me nothing I could not think of putting a value 
on them, but that I should apply to you. Send him a set of 
my children and god-children (poems and novels), and — if he 
found, on seeing them, that they were worth a dozen flasks of 
champaign, he might address the case," &c. 

A compliment not less nattering was paid within a few 
weeks after the appearance of Peveril. In the epistle intro- 
ductory of that novel, Clutterbuck amuses Dryasdust with 
an account of a recent visit from their common parent "the 
Author of Waverley," whose outward man, as it was in those 
days, is humorously caricatured, with a suggestion that he had 
probably sat to Geoffrey Crayon for his "Stout Gentleman of 
No. II. ; " and who is made to apologise for the heartiness with 
which he pays his duty to the viands set before him, by alleg- 
ing that he is in training for the anniversary of the Roxburghe 
Club : — " He was preparing himself " (said the gracious and 
portly Eidolon) " to hobnob with the lords of the literary treas- 
ures of Althorpe and Hodnet in Madeira negus, brewed by the 
classical Dibdin." This drollery in fact alluded, not to the 
E/Oxburghe, but to an institution of the same class which was 
just at this time springing into life in Edinburgh — the Banna- 
tyne Club, of which Scott was the founder and first president. 
The heroes of the Eoxburghe, however, were not to penetrate 



414 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the mystification of Captain Clntterbnck's report, and from 
their jovial and erudite board, when they next congregated 
around its "generous flasks of Burgundy, each flanked by an 
uncut fif teener" — their Secretary, Dr. Dibdin, wrote to Scott, 
saying : — " The death of Sir M. Sykes having occasioned a 
vacancy in our Club, I am desired to request that you will 
have the goodness to make that fact known to the Author of 
Waverley, who, from the -profjeme to Peveril of the Peak, 
seems disposed to become one of the members thereof; and I 
am further desired to express the wishes of the said Club 
that the said Author may succeed to the said Baronet." — 
Sir Walter answered, that he would find means to convey the 
message to the "Author of Waverley ; " adding — "As his per- 
sonal appearance in the fraternity is not like to be a speedy 
event, the table of the Roxburghe, like that of King Arthur, 
will have a vacant chair. But if this author, who ' hath fern- 
seed and walketh invisible,' should not appear to claim it 
before I come to London, with permission of the Club, I, who 
have something of adventure in me, although a knight like 
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, ' dubbed with unhacked rapier, and 
on carpet consideration,' would, rather than lose the chance 
of a dinner with the Roxburghe Club, take upon me the advent- 
ure of the siege perilous, and reap some amends for perils and 
scandals into which the invisible champion has drawn me, by 
being his locum tenens on so distinguished an occasion." — The 
Club gladly accepted this offer ; and Scott writes again to their 
Secretary : — " Mad Tom tells us, that ' the Prince of Darkness 
is a gentleman;' 1 and this mysterious personage will, I hope, 
partake as much of his honourable feelings as his invisibility, 
and, retaining his incognito, permit me to enjoy, in his stead, 
an honour which I value more than I do that which has been 
bestowed on me by the credit of having written any of his 
novels." — In his way of taking both the Frenchman's civili- 
ties and those of the Roxburghers, we see evident symptoms 
that the mask had begun to be worn rather carelessly. Sir 
Walter, it may be worth mentioning, was also about this time 
elected a member of "The Club" — that famous one estab- 
lished by Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds. Moreover, he had 
been chosen, on the death of the antiquary Lysons, Professor 
of Ancient History to the Royal Academy — a chair originally 
founded at Dr. Johnson's suggestion, "in order that Goldy 
might have a right to be at their dinners." I believe he was 
present at more than one of the festivals of each of these fra- 

1 King Lear, Act III. Scene 5. 



ASSOCIATION WITH CLUBS. 415 

ternities. A particular dinner of the Royal Academy, at all 
events, is recorded with some picturesque details in his essay 
on the life of Kemble, who sat next to him upon that occasion. 

The Bannatyne Club was a child of his own, and from first 
to last he took a most fatherly concern in all its proceedings. 
His practical sense dictated a direction of their funds different 
from what had been adopted by the Eoxburghe. Their Club 
Books already constitute a very curious and valuable library 
of Scottish history and antiquities : their example was soon 
followed with not inferior success by the Maitland Club of 
Glasgow, of which too Sir Walter was a zealous associate ; by 
the Spalding Club of Aberdeen — and since his death by a 
fourth, founded at Edinburgh in his honour, and styled The 
Abbotsford Club — which last has taken a still wider range — 
not confining their printing to works connected with Scotland, 
but admitting all materials that can throw light on the ancient 
history or literature of any country, described or handled by 
the Author of Waverley. 

At the meetings of the Bannatyne he presided from 1823 to 
1831 ; and in the chair on their anniversary dinners, surrounded 
by some of his oldest and dearest friends — Thomas Thomson 
(the Vice-President), John Clerk (Lord Eldin), the Chief-Com- 
missioner Adam, the Chief-Baron Shepherd, Lord Jeffrey, Mr. 
Constable — and let me not forget his kind, intelligent, and 
industrious ally, Mr. David Laing, 1 bookseller, the Secretary 
of the Club — he from this time forward was the unfailing 
source and centre of all sorts of merriment, " within the limits 
of becoming mirth." Of the origin and early progress of their 
institution, the reader has a full account in his reviewal of 
Pitcairn's Criminal Trials ; and the last edition of his Poems 
includes that excellent song composed for their first dinner — 
on March 9, 1823 — and then sung by James Ballantyne, and 
heartily chorused by all the aforesaid dignitaries : — 

" Assist me, ye friends of old books and old wine, 

To sing in the praises of sage Bannatyne, 

Who left such a treasure of old Scottish lore, 

As enables each age to print one volume more. 

One volume more, my friends — one volume more, 
We'll ransack old Banny for one volume more." — &c. 

Various passages in Scott's correspondence have recalled to 
my recollection the wonder with which the friends best ac- 
quainted with the extent of his usual engagements observed, 

1 Now Librarian to the Signet Library, Edin., and LL.D. — 1871. 



416 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

about this period, his readiness in mixing himself np with the 
business of associations far different from the Bannatyne Club. 
I cannot doubt that his conduct as President of the Royal 
Society, and as manager of the preparations for the King's 
visit, had a main influence in this matter. In these capacities 
he had been thrown into contact with many of the most eminent 
of his fellow-citizens, who had previously been accustomed to 
flavour their notions of him with something of the gall of local 
politics ; and they had soon appreciated his influence, for they 
must all have had abundant opportunities of observing the ease 
with which ill humours are engendered, to the disturbance of 
all really useful discussion, wherever social equals assemble in 
conclave, without having some oificial preses, uniting the 
weight of strong and quick intellect, with the calmness and 
moderation of a brave spirit, and the conciliating grace of 
habitual courtesy. Presumption, dogmatism, and arrogance 
shrunk from the over-awing contrast of his modest greatness : 
the poison of every little passion was shamed and neutralised 
beneath the charitable dignity of his penetration: and jealousy, 
fretf illness, and spleen felt themselves transmuted in the placid 
atmosphere of good sense, good humour, and good manners. 
And whoever might be apt to plead off on the score of personal 
duty of any sort, Scott had always leisure as well as temper at 
command, when invited to take part in any business connected 
with a rational hope of public advantage. These things opened, 
like the discovery of some new element of wealth, upon certain 
eager spirits who considered the Royal Society as the great 
local parent and minister of practical inventions and mechani- 
cal improvements ; and they found it no hard matter to inspire 
their genial chief with a warm sympathy in not a few of their 
then predominant speculations. He was invited, for example, 
to place himself at the head of a new company for improving 
the manufacture of oil gas, and in the spring of this year began 
to officiate regularly in that capacity. Other associations of a 
like kind called for his countenance, and received it. The 
fame of his ready zeal and happy demeanour grew and spread ; 
and from this time, until bodily infirmities disabled him, Sir 
Walter occupied, as the most usual, acceptable, and successful 
chairman, of public meetings of almost every sort, apart from 
politics, a very prominent place among the active citizens of 
his native town. Any foreign student of statistics who should 
have happened to peruse the files of an Edinburgh newspaper 
for the period to which I allude, would, I think, have concluded 
that there must be at least two Sir Walter Scotts in the place 



PRESIDENT OF TUE ROYAL SOCIETY. 417 

— one the miraculously fertile author whose works occupied 
two-thirds of its literary advertisements and critical columns — 
another some retired magistrate or senator of easy fortune and 
indefatigable philanthropy, who devoted the rather oppressive 
leisure of an honourable old age to the promotion of patriotic 
ameliorations, the watchful guardianship of charities, and the 
ardent patronage of educational institutions. 

The reader of his correspondence will find hints about various 
little matters connected with Scott's own advancing edifice, in 
which he may trace the President of the Eoyal Society and 
the Chairman of the Gas Company. But I cannot say that the 
" century of inventions " at Abbotsf ord turned out very happily. 
His bells to move by compression of air in a piston proved 
a poor succedaneum for the simple wire ; and his application 
of gas-light to the interior of a dwelling-house was in fact 
attended with so many inconveniences, that erelong all his fam- 
ily heartily wished it had never been thought of. Moreover, he 
had deceived himself as to the expense of such an apparatus 
when constructed and maintained for the use of a single do- 
mestic establishment. The effect of the apparatus was at first 
superb. In sitting down to table, in Autumn, no one observed 
that in each of three chandeliers there lurked a tiny bead 
of red light. Dinner passed off, and the sun went down, and 
suddenly, at the turning of a screw, the room was filled with a 
gush of splendour worthy of the palace of Aladdin ; but, as in 
the case of Aladdin, the old lamp would have been better in 
the upshot. Jewelry sparkled, but cheeks and lips looked 
cold and wan in this fierce illumination ; and the eye was 
wearied, and the brow ached, if the sitting was at all pro- 
tracted. I confess, however, that my chief enmity to the 
whole affair arises from my conviction that Sir Walter's own 
health was damaged, in his latter years, in consequence of his 
habitually working at night under the intense and burning 
glare of a broad star of gas. 

In June Quentin Durward was published; and surpassing 
as its popularity was eventually, Constable, who was in London 
at the time, wrote in cold terms of its immediate reception. 

Very shortly before the bookseller left Edinburgh for that 
trip, he had concluded another bargain (his last of the sort) for 
the purchase of Waverley copyrights — acquiring the author's 
property in The Pirate, Nigel, Peveril, and also Quentin Dur- 
ward, out and out, at the price of five thousand guineas. He 
had thus paid for the copyright of novels (over and above the 
half profits of the early separate- editions) the sum of L.22,500 ; 
2e 



418 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

* 
and his advances upon " works of fiction " still in embryo, 
amounted at this moment to L.10,000 more. He began, in 
short, and the wonder is that he began so late, to suspect that 
the process of creation was moving too rapidly. The publica- 
tion of different sets of the Tales in a collective shape may 
probably have had a share in opening his eyes to the fact, that 
the voluminousness of an author is anything but favourable 
to the rapid diffusion of his works as library books — the great 
object with any publisher who aspires at founding a solid 
fortune. But he merely intimated on this occasion that, con- 
sidering the usual chances of life and health, he must decline 
contracting for any more novels until those already bargained 
for were written. Scott himself appears to have admitted for 
a moment the suspicion that he had been overdoing in the field 
of romance ; and opened the scheme of a work on popular 
superstitions, in the form of dialogue, for which he had long 
possessed ample materials in his curious library of diablerie. 
But before Constable had leisure to consider this proposal in 
all its bearings, Quentin Durward, from being, as Scott ex- 
pressed it, frost-bit, had emerged into most fervid and flourish- 
ing life. In fact, the sensation which this novel on its first 
appearance created in Paris, was extremely similar to that 
which attended the original Waverley in Edinburgh, and 
Ivanhoe afterwards in London. For the first time Scott had 
ventured on foreign ground, and the French public, long wearied 
of the pompous tragedians and feeble romancers, who had alone 
striven to bring out the ancient history and manners of their 
country in popular forms, were seized with a fever of delight 
when Louis XL and Charles the Bold started into life again at 
the beck of the Northern Magician. The result of Quentin 
Durward, as regards the contemporary literature of the Con- 
tinent, would open a field for ample digression. As concerns 
the author himself, the rays of foreign enthusiasm speedily 
thawed the frost of Constable's unwonted misgivings ; the 
Dialogues on Superstition, if he ever began them, were very 
soon dropped, and the Novelist resumed his pen. He had not 
sunk under the short-lived frown — for he wrote to Ballantyne, 
on first ascertaining that a damp was thrown on his usual manu- 
facture, 

" The mouse who only trusts to one poor hole, 
Can never be a mouse of any soul ; " 

and, while his publisher yet remained irresolute as to the plan 
of Dialogues, threw off his excellent Essay on Eomance for the 



QUENTIN BUBWAliB. 419 

Encyclopaedia Britannica ; and I -cannot but consider it as 
another display of his high self-reliance, that, though he well 
knew to what influence Quentin owed its ultimate success in 
the British market, he, the instant he found himself encouraged 
to take up the trade of story-telling again, sprang back to Scot- 
land — nay, voluntarily encountered new difficulties, by select- 
ing the comparatively tame and unpicturesque realities of 
modern manners in his native province. 

A conversation, which much interested me at the time, had, 
I fancy, some share at least in this determination. As he, 
Laidlaw, and myself, were lounging on our ponies, one fine calm 
afternoon, along the brow of the Eildon Hill where it overhangs 
Melrose, he mentioned to us gaily the row, as he called it, that 
was going on in Paris about Quentin Durward, and said, " I 
can't but think that I could make better play still with some- 
thing German." Laidlaw grumbled at this, and said, like a 
true Scotchman, "Na, na, sir — take my word for it, you are 
always best, like Helen MacGregor, when your foot is on your 
native heath; and I have often thought that if you were to 
write a novel, and lay the scene here in the very year you were 
writing it, you would exceed yourself." — "Hame's hame," 
quoth Scott, smiling, "be it ever sae namely. There's some- 
thing in what you say, Willie. What suppose I were to take 
Captain Clutterbuck for a hero, and never let the story step a 
yard beyond the village below us yonder ? " — " The very thing 
I want," says Laidlaw; "stick to Melrose in July 1823." — 
" Well, upon my word," he answered, " the field would be quite 
wide enough — andwki/orwo?" — (This pet phrase of Meg 
Dods was a Laidlawism.) — Some fun followed about the differ- 
ent real persons in the village that might be introduced with 
comical effect ; but as Laidlaw and I talked and laughed over 
our worthy neighbours, his air became graver and graver ; and 
he at length said, " Ay, ay, if one could look into the heart of 
that little cluster of cottages, no fear but you would find mate- 
rials enow for tragedy as well as comedy. I undertake to say 
there is some real romance at this moment going on down 
there, that, if it could have justice done to it, would be Avell 
worth all the fiction that was ever spun out of human brains." 
He then told us a tale of dark domestic guilt which had re- 
cently come under his notice as Sheriff, and of which the 
scene was not Melrose, but a smaller hamlet, on the other side 
of the Tweed, full in our view ; but the details were not of a 
kind to be dwelt upon ; — anything more dreadful was never 
conceived by Crabbe, and he told it so as to produce on us who 



420 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

listened all the effect of another Sail of Justice. It could never 
have entered into his head to elaborate such, a tale ; but both 
Laidlaw and I used to think that this talk suggested St. Ronan's 
Well — though my good friend was by no means disposed to 
accept that as payment in full of his demand, and from time to 
time afterwards, would give the Sheriff a little poking about 
" Melrose in July." 

Before Sir Walter settled to the new novel, he received 
Joanna Baillie's long-promised Collection of Poetical Miscel- 
lanies, in which appeared his dramatic sketch of Macduff's 
Cross. When Halidon Hill first came forth, there were not 
wanting reviewers who hailed it in a style of rapture, such as 
might have been expected had it been a Macbeth. But this 
folly soon sunk ; and I only mention it as an instance of the 
extent to which reputation bewilders and confounds even per- 
sons who have good brains enough when they find it convenient 
to exercise them. The second attempt of the class produced 
no sensation whatever at the time ; and both would have been 
long since forgotten, but that they came from Scott's pen. 
They both contain some fine passages — Halidon Hill has, 
indeed, several grand ones. But, on the whole, they always 
seemed to me unworthy of Sir Walter ; and, now that I have 
read his admirable letters on dramatic composition to Allan 
Cunningham, it appears doubly hard to account for the rash- 
ness with which he committed himself in even such slender at- 
tempts on a species of composition, of which, in his cool hour, 
he so fully appreciated the difficult demands. Nevertheless, I 
am very far from agreeing with those critics who have gravely 
talked of Halidon Hill and Macduff's Cross, and the still more 
unfortunate Doom of Devorgoil, as proving that Sir Walter 
could not have succeeded in the drama, either serious or comic. 
It would be as fair to conclude, from the abortive fragment of 
the Vampyre, that Lord Byron could not have written a good 
novel or romance in prose. Scott threw off these things cur- 
rente calamo; he never gave himself time to consider before- 
hand what could be made of their materials, nor bestowed a 
moment on correcting them ; and neither when they were new, 
nor even after, did he seem to attach the slightest importance 
to them. 

The month of August 1823 was one of the happiest in Scott's 
life. Never did I see a brighter day at Abbotsford than that 
on which Miss Edgeworth first arrived there — never can I for- 
get her look and accent when she was received by him at his 
archway, and exclaimed, "Everything about you is exactly 



VISIT OF MISS EBGEWORTH. 421 

what one ought to have had wit enough to dream ! w The 
weather was beautiful, and the edifice, and its appurtenances, 
were all but complete ; and day after day, so long as she could 
remain, her host had always some new plan of gaiety. One 
day there was fishing on the Cauldshield's Loch, and a dinner 
on the heathy bank. Another, the whole party feasted by Sir 
Thomas the Rhymer's waterfall in the glen — and the stone on 
which Maria that day sat was ever afterwards called Edge- 
worth's Stone. A third day we had to go further afield. He 
must needs shew her, not Newark only, but all the upper 
scenery of the Yarrow, where " fair hangs the apple frae the 
rock," — and the baskets were unpacked about sunset, beside 
the ruined Chapel overlooking St. Mary's Loch — and he had 
scrambled to gather blue-bells and heath-flowers, with which all 
the young ladies must twine their hair, — and they sang, and 
he recited, until it was time to go home beneath the softest of 
harvest moons. Thus a fortnight was passed — and the vision 
closed ; for Miss Edgeworth never saw Abbotsf ord again during 
his life ; and I am very sure she could never bear to look upon 
it now that the spirit is fled. 

Another welcome guest of the same month was Mr. Adolphus 
— the author of the Letters to Heber ; whose reminiscences of 
this and several subsequent visits are singularly vivid and 
interesting. He says: — "The circumstances under which I 
presented myself were peculiar, as the only cause of my being 
under his roof was one which could not without awkwardness 
be alluded to, while a strict reserve existed on the subject of 
the Waverley novels. This, however, did not create any embar- 
rassment; and he entered into conversation as if anything that 
might have been said with reference to the origin of our 
acquaintance had been said an hour before. I never saw a man 
who, in his intercourse with all persons, was so perfect a mas- 
ter of courtesy. His manners were so plain and natural, and 
his kindness took such immediate possession of the feelings, 
that this excellence in him might for a while pass almost unob- 
served. I cannot pay a higher testimony to it than by owning 
that I first fully appreciated it from his behaviour to others. 
His air and aspect, at the moment of a first introduction, were 
placid, modest, and, for his time of life, venerable. Occasion- 
ally, where he stood a little on ceremony, he threw into his 
address a deferential tone, which had in it something of old- 
fashioned politeness, and became him extremely well. 

" A point of hospitality in which Sir Walter Scott never 
failed, whatever might be the pretensions of the guest, was to 



422 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

do the honours of conversation. When a stranger arrived, he 
seemed to consider it as much a duty to offer him the resources 
of his mind as those of his table ; taking care, however, by his 
choice of subjects, to give the visitor an opportunity of making 
his own stores, if he had them, available. To me he addressed 
himself often as to a member of his own profession ; and indeed 
he seemed always to have a real pleasure in citing from his 
own experience as an advocate and a law-officer. 

" It would, I think, be extremely difficult to give a just idea 
of his general conversation to any one who had not known him. 
Considering his great personal and literary popularity, and the 
wide circle of society in which he had lived, it is perhaps re- 
markable that so few of his sayings, real or imputed, are in 
circulation. But he did not affect sayings ; the points and sen- 
tentious turns, which are so easily caught up and transmitted, 
were not natural to him : though he occasionally expressed a 
thought very pithily and neatly. For example, he once de- 
scribed the Duke of Wellington's style of debating as 'slicing 
the argument into two or three parts, and helping himself to 
the best.' But the great charm of his ' table-talk ' was in the 
sweetness and abandon with which it flowed, — always, how- 
ever, guided by good sense and taste ; the warm and unstudied 
eloquence with which he expressed rather sentiments than 
opinions ; and the liveliness and force with which he narrated 
and described : and all that he spoke derived so much of its 
effect from indefinable felicities of manner, look, and tone — 
and sometimes from the choice of apparently insignificant 
words — that a moderately faithful transcript of his sen- 
tences would be but a faint image of his conversation. No 
one who has seen him can forget the surprising power of 
change which his countenance shewed when awakened from a 
state of composure. In 1823, his face, which was healthy and 
sanguine, and the hair about it, which had a strong reddish 
tinge, contrasted rather than harmonised with the sleek, silvery 
locks above ; a contrast which might seem rather suited to a 
jovial and humorous than to a pathetic expression. But his 
features were equally capable of both. The form and hue of 
his eyes (for the benefit of minute physiognomists it should be 
noted that the iris contained some small specks of brown) were 
wonderfully calculated for shewing great varieties of emotion. 
Their mournful aspect was extremely earnest and affecting; 
and when he told some dismal and mysterious story, they had 
a doubtful, melancholy, exploring look, which appealed irre- 
sistibly to the hearer's imagination. Occasionally, when he 



REMINISCENCES BY MR. ADOLPHUS. 423 

spoke of something very audacious or eccentric, they would 
dilate and light up with a tragi-comic, hare-brained expression, 
quite peculiar to himself ; one might see in it a whole chapter 
of Coeur de Lion and the Clerk of Copmanhurst. Never, per- 
haps, did a man go through all the gradations of laughter 
with such complete enjoyment, and a countenance so radiant. 
The first dawn of a humorous thought would shew itself some- 
times, as he sat silent, by an involuntary lengthening of the 
upper lip, followed by a shy sidelong glance at his neighbours, 
indescribably whimsical, and seeming to ask from their looks 
whether the spark of drollery should be suppressed or allowed 
to blaze out. In the full tide of mirth he did indeed ' laugh 
the heart's laugh,' like Walpole, but it was not boisterous and 
overpowering, nor did it check the course of his words; he 
could go on telling or descanting, while his lungs did 'crow 
like chanticleer,' his syllables, in the struggle, growing more 
emphatic, his accent more strongly Scotch, and his voice plain- 
tive with excess of merriment. 

" The habits of life at Abbotsf ord, when I first saw it, ran in 
the same easy, rational, and pleasant course which I believe 
they always afterwards took; though the family was at this 
time rather straitened in its arrangements, as some of the prin- 
cipal rooms were not finished. After breakfast Sir Walter 
took his short interval of study in the light and elegant little 
room afterwards called Miss Scott's. That which he occupied 
when Abbotsf ord was complete, though more convenient in 
some material respects, seemed to me the least cheerful 1 and 
least private in the house. It had, however, a recommendation 
which perhaps he was very sensible of, that as he sat at his 
writing-table, he could look out at his young trees. About one 
o'clock he walked or rode, generally with some of his visitors. 
At this period, he used to be a good deal on horseback, and a 
pleasant sight it was to see the gallant old gentleman, in his 
seal-skin cap and short green jacket, lounging along a field-side 
on his mare, Sibyl Grey, and pausing now and then to talk, 
with a serio-comic look, to a labouring man or woman, and re- 
joice them with some quaint saying in broad Scotch. The 
dinner hour was early ; the sitting after dinner was hospitably 
but not immoderately prolonged ; and the whole family party 
(for such it always seemed, even if there were several visitors) 
then met again for a short evening, which was passed in conver- 
sation and music. I once heard Sir Walter say, that he believed 
there was a 'pair' of cards (such was his antiquated expres- 

1 It is, however, the only sitting-room in the house that looks southward. 



424 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

sion) somewhere in the house — but probably there is no tradi- 
tion of their having ever been used. The drawing-room and 
library (unfurnished at the time of my first visit) opened into 
each other, and formed a beautiful evening apartment. By 
every one who has visited at Abbotsford they must be asso- 
ciated with some of the most delightful recollections of his life. 
Sir Walter listened to the music of his daughters, which was 
all congenial to his own taste, with a never-failing enthusiasm. 
He followed the fine old songs which Mrs. Lockhart sang to 
her harp with his mind, eyes, and lips, almost as if joining in 
an act of religion. To other musical performances he was a 
dutiful, and often a pleased listener ; but I believe he cared 
little for mere music — the notes failed to charm him if they 
were not connected with good words, or immediately associated 
with some history or strong sentiment, upon which his imagina- 
tion could fasten. A similar observation might, I should con- 
ceive, apply to his feeling of other arts. I do not remember 
any picture or print at Abbotsford which was remarkable 
merely as a work of colour or design. All, I think, either rep- 
resented historical, romantic, or poetical subjects, or related 
to persons, places, or circumstances in which he took an inter- 
est. Even in architecture, his taste had the same bias ; almost 
every stone of his house bore an allusion or suggested a senti- 
ment. 

"It seemed at first a little strange, in a scene where so 
many things brought to mind the Waverley novels, to hear 
no direct mention of them, or even allusion to their existence. 
But as forbearance on this head was a rule on which a com- 
plete tacit understanding subsisted, there was no embarrass- 
ment or appearance of mystery on the subject. Once or twice 
I have heard a casual reference made, in Sir Walter's pres- 
ence, to some topic in the novels ; no surprise or appearance 
of displeasure followed, but the conversation, so far as it 
tended that way, died a natural death. It has, I believe, 
happened that he himself has been caught unawares on the 
forbidden ground; I have heard it told by a very acute 
observer, not now living, that on his coming once to Abbots- 
ford, after the publication of The Pirate, Sir Walter asked 
him, ' Well, and how is our friend Kemble ? glorious John ! ' 
and then, recollecting, of course, that he was talking of Claud 
Halcro, he checked himself, and could not for some moments 
recover from the false step. Had a man been ever so prone 
to indiscretion on such subjects, it would have been unpardon- 
able to betray it towards Sir Walter Scott, who (beside all his 



REMINISCENCES BY MR. ABOLPHUS. 425 

other claims to respect and affection) was himself cautions, 
even to nicety, of hazarding an inquiry or remark which might 
appear to be an intrusion upon the affairs of those with whom 
he conversed. It may be observed, too, that the publications 
of the day were by no means the staple of conversation at 
Abbotsf ord, though they had their turn ; and with respect to 
his own works, Sir Walter did not often talk even of those 
which were avowed. If he ever indulged in anything like 
egotism, he loved better to speak of what he had done and 
seen than of what he had written. 

"After all, there is perhaps hardly a secret in the world 
which has not its safety-valve. Though Sir Walter abstained 
strictly from any mention of the Waverley novels, he did not 
scruple to talk, and that with great zest, of the plays which 
had been founded upon some of them, and the characters, as 
there represented. Soon after our first meeting, he described 
to me, with his usual dramatic power, the deathbed scene of 
' the original Dandie Dinmont ; ' of course referring, ostensibly 
at least, to the opera of Guy Mannering. He dwelt with 
extreme delight upon Mackay's performances of the Bailie 
and Dominie Sampson, and appeared to taste them with all 
the fresh and disinterested enjoyment of a common spectator. 
I do not know a more interesting circumstance in the history 
of the Waverley novels, than the pleasure which their illus- 
trious author thus received, as it were at the rebound, from 
those creations of his own mind which had so largely increased 
the enjoyments of all the civilised world. 

" In one instance only did he, in my presence, say or do 
anything which seemed to have an intentional reference to 
the novels themselves, while they were yet unacknowledged. 
On the last day of my visit in 1823, I rode out with Sir 
Walter and his friend Mr. Rose, who was then his guest and 
frequent companion in these short rambles. Sir Walter led 
us a little way down the left bank of the Tweed, and then into 
the moors by a track called the Girth Road, along which, he 
told us, the pilgrims from that side of the river used to come 
to Melrose. We traced upward, at a distance, the course of 
the little stream called the Elland. When we had ridden a 
little time on the moors, he said to me rather pointedly, ' I am 
going to shew you something that I think will interest you ; ' 
and presently, in a wild corner of the hills, he halted us at 
a place where stood three small ancient towers or castellated 
houses, in ruins, at short distances from each other. It was 
plain, upon the slightest consideration of the topography, that 



426 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

one (perhaps any one) of these was the tower of Glendearg, 
where so many romantic and marvellous adventures happen in 
The Monastery. While we looked at this forlorn group, I said 
to Sir Walter that they were what Burns called ' ghaist-allur- 
ing edifices.' ' Yes/ he answered carelessly, ' I daresay there 
are many stories about them.' " 

Every friend of Sir Walter's must admire particularly Mr. 
Adolphus's exquisite description of his laugh ; but indeed, every 
word of these memoranda is precious. 

In September, the Highland Society, at the request of Sir 
Henry Stewart of Alianton, sent a deputation to his seat in. 
Lanarkshire, to examine and report upon his famous improve- 
ments in the art of transplanting trees. Sir Walter was one 
of the committee, and he took a lively interest in it ; witness 
his Essay on Landscape Gardening. He himself made several 
Allantonian experiments at Abbotsford ; but found reason in 
the sequel to abate somewhat of the enthusiasm which his Essay 
expresses as to the system. The question, after all, comes to 
pounds, shillings, and pence — and, whether Sir Henry's ac- 
counts had or had not been accurately kept, the thing turned 
out greatly more expensive on Tweedside than he found it 
represented in Clydesdale. 

I accompanied Sir Walter on this little expedition, in the 
course of which we paid several other visits, and explored not 
a few ancient castles in the upper regions of the Tweed and 
the Clyde. Even while the weather was most unpropitious, 
nothing could induce him to remain in the carriage when we 
approached any ruined or celebrated edifice. If he had never 
seen it before, his curiosity was like that of an eager stripling : 
if he had examined it fifty times, he must renew his famili- 
arity, and gratify the tenderness of youthful reminiscences. 
While on the road, his conversation never flagged — story 
suggested story, and ballad came upon ballad in endless suc- 
cession. But what struck me most, was the apparently omniv- 
erous grasp of his memory. That he should recollect every 
stanza of any ancient ditty of chivalry or romance that had 
once excited his imagination, could no longer surprise me : but 
it seemed as if he remembered everything without exception, 
so it were in anything like the shape of verse, that he had 
ever read. Eor example, the morning after we left Allanton, 
we went across the country to breakfast with his friend Crans- 
toun (Lord Corehouse), who accompanied us in the same 
carriage ; and his Lordship happening to repeat a phrase, 



SCOTT'S RETENTIVE MEMORY. 427 

remarkable only for its absurdity, from a Magazine poem of 
the very silliest feebleness, which they had laughed at when 
at College together, Scott immediately began at the beginning, 
and gave it us to the end, with apparently no more effort than 
if he himself had composed it the day before. I could after 
this easily believe a story often told by Hogg, to the effect 
that, lamenting in Scott's presence his having lost his only 
copy of a long ballad composed by him in his early days, and 
of which he then could recall merely the subject, and one or 
two fragments, Sir Walter forthwith said, with a smile, — ■ 
" Take your pencil, Jamie, and I'll dictate your ballad to you, 
word for word ; " — which was done accordingly. 1 

As this was among the first times that I ever travelled for 
a few days in company with Scott, I may as well add the sur- 
prise with which his literary diligence, when away from home 
and his books, could not fail to be observed. Wherever we 
slept, whether in the noble mansion or in the shabbiest of 
country inns, and whether the work was done after retiring at 
night or before an early start in the morning, he very rarely 
mounted the carriage again without having a packet of the 
well-known aspect, ready sealed and corded, and addressed to 
his printer in Edinburgh. I used to suspect that he had 
adopted in his latter years the plan of writing everything on 
paper of the quarto form, in place of the folio which he at an 
earlier period used, chiefly because in this way, whatever he 
was writing, and wherever he wrote, he might seem to casual 
observers to be merely engaged upon a common letter; and 
the rapidity of his execution, taken with the shape of his sheet, 
has probably deceived hundreds ; but when he had finished his 
two or three letters, St. Konan's Well, or whatever was in hand, 
had made a chapter in advance. 

1 "One morning at breakfast, in my father's house, shortly after one 
of Sir Walter's severe illnesses, he was asked to partake of some of ' the 
baked meats that coldly did furnish forth the breakfast-Uible.'' — ' No, no,' 
he answered ; ' I bear in mind at present, Bob, the advice of your old 
friend Dr. Weir — 

From season VI meats avert your eyes, 
From hams, and tongues, and pigeon pies — 
A venison pasty set before ye, 
Each bit you eat — Memento mori* 

This was a verse of a clever rhyming prescription sent some 30 years 
before, and which my father then remembered to have repeated upon 
one of their Liddesdale raids. The verses had almost entirely escaped 
his memory, but Sir Walter was able to give us a long screed of them. — 
Andrew Shortrede.' n 



428 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

The novel just mentioned was published in December, and 
in its English reception there was another falling off, which 
of course somewhat dispirited the bookseller for the moment. 
Scotch readers in general dissented stoutly from this judgment, 
alleging (as they might well do) that Meg Dods deserved a 
place by the side of Monkbarns, Bailie Jarvie, and Captain 
Dalgetty ; — that no one, who had lived in the author's own 
country, could hesitate to recognise vivid and happy portrait- 
ures in Touchwood, MacTurk, and the recluse minister of St. 
Konan's ; — that the descriptions of natural scenery might rank 
with any he had given ; — and, finally, that the whole character 
of Clara Mowbray, but especially its development in the third 
volume, formed an original creation, destined to be classed by 
posterity with the highest efforts of tragic romance. Some 
Edinburgh critics, however — (both talkers and writers) — 
received with considerable grudgings certain sarcastic sketches 
of the would-be-fine life of the watering-place — sketches which 
their Southern brethren had kindly suggested might be drawn 
from Northern observation, but could never appear better than 
fantastic caricatures to any person who had visited even a 
third-rate English resort of the same nominal class. There is 
no doubt that the author dashed off these minor personages 
with, in the painter's phrase, a rich brush; but I must confess 
my belief that they have far more truth about them than his 
countrymen seemed at the time willing to allow 5 and that while 
the Continent was shut, as it was in the days of Sir Walter's 
youthful wanderings, a trip to such a sequestrated place as 
Gilsland, or Moffat, or Innerleithen — (almost as inaccessible 
to London duns and bailiffs as the Isle of Man was then, or as 
Boulogne and Dieppe are now) — may have supplied the future 
novelist's note-book with authentic materials even for such 
worthies as Sir Bingo and Lady Binks, Dr. Quackleben, and 
Mr. Winterblossom. It should moreover be borne in mind, that 
during our insular blockade, northern watering-places were not 
alone favoured by the resort of questionable characters from 
the south. The comparative cheapness of living, and espe- 
cially of education, procured for Sir Walter's " own romantic 
town" a constant succession of such visitants, so long as they 
could have no access to the tables d'hote and dancing-masters of 
the Continent. When I first mingled in the society of Edin- 
burgh, it abounded with English, broken in character and in 
fortune, who found a mere title (even a baronet's one) of con- 
sequence enough to obtain for them, from the proverbially 
cautious Scotch, a degree of attention to which they had long 



ST. RONAN'S WELL. 429 

been unaccustomed, nearer home; and I heard many name, 
when the novel was new, a booby of some rank, in whom they 
recognised a sufficiently accurate prototype for Sir Bingo. 

Sir Walter had shewn a remarkable degree of good-nature in 
the completion of this novel. When the end came in view, 
James Ballantyne suddenly took vast alarm about a particular 
feature in the history of the heroine. In the original con- 
ception, and in the book as actually written and printed, Miss 
Mowbray's mock marriage had not halted at the profaned cere- 
mony of the church ; and the delicate printer shrunk from the 
idea of obtruding on the fastidious public the possibility of any 
personal contamination having been incurred by a high-born 
damsel of the nineteenth century. Scott was at first inclined 
to dismiss his friend's scruples as briefly as he had done those 
of Blackwood in the case of the Black Dwarf : — " You would 
never have quarrelled with it," he said, " had the thing hap- 
pened to a girl in gingham : — the silk petticoat can make little 
difference." James reclaimed with double energy, and called 
Constable to the rescue ; — and after some pause, the author 
very reluctantly consented to cancel and rewrite about twenty- 
four pages, which was enough to obliterate to a certain extent 
the dreaded scandal — and in a similar degree, as he always 
persisted, to perplex and weaken the course of his narrative 
and the dark effect of its catastrophe. 

Whoever might take offence with different parts of the book, 
it was rapturously hailed by the inhabitants of Innerleithen, 
who immediately identified the most striking of its localities 
with those of their own pretty village and picturesque neigh- 
bourhood, and foresaw in this celebration a chance of restoring 
the popularity of their long neglected Well ; — to which Scott 
had occasionally escorted his mother and sister in the days of 
boyhood. The notables of the little town voted by acclamation 
that the old name of Innerleithen should be, as far as possible, 
dropped thenceforth, and that of St. Eonan's adopted. Nor 
were they mistaken in their auguries. An unheard-of influx 
of water-bibbers forthwith crowned their hopes; and spruce 
h'Atles and huge staring lodging-houses soon arose to disturb 
wofully every association that had induced Sir Walter to make 
Innerleithen the scene of a romance. Nor were they who 
profited by these invasions of the genus loci at all sparing in 
their demonstrations of gratitude ; — the traveller reads on the 
corner of every new erection there, Abbotsford Place, Waverley 
Mow, The Marmion Hotel, or some inscription of the like 



430 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Among other consequences of the revived fame of the place, 
a yearly festival was instituted for the celebration of The 
St. Ronan's Border Games. A club of Bowmen of the Border, 
arrayed in doublets of Lincoln green, with broad blue bonnets, 
and having the Ettrick Shepherd for Captain, assumed the 
principal management of this exhibition ; and Scott was well 
pleased to be enrolled among them, and during several years 
was a regular attendant, both on the Meadow, where (besides 
archery) leaping, racing, wrestling, stone-heaving, and hammer- 
throwing, went on opposite to the noble old Castle of Traquair, 
and at the subsequent banquet, where Hogg in full costume 
always presided as master of the ceremonies. A gayer spectacle 
than that of Tlie St. Ronan's Games in those days could not 
well have been desired. The Shepherd, even when on the verge 
of threescore, seldom failed to carry off some of the prizes, to the 
astonishment of his vanquished juniors ; and the bon-vivants of 
Edinburgh mustered strong among the gentry and yeomanry 
of Tweeddale to see him afterwards in his glory filling the 
president's chair with eminent success, and commonly sup- 
ported on this — which was, in fact, the grandest evening of 
his year — by Sir Walter Scott, Professor Wilson, Sir Adam 
Eergusson, and Peter Eobertson. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Publication of Redgauntlet — Abbotsford completed — Marriage of Cap- 
tain Scott — Constable's Miscellany projected — Life of Napoleon 
begun — Tales of the Crusaders published — Tour in Ireland — Visit 
to Windermere — Moore at Abbotsford — Rumours of evil among the 
Booksellers. 1824-1825. 

Immediately on the conclusion of St. Ronan's Well, Sir 
Walter began Redgauntlet ; — but it had made considerable 
progress at press before Constable and Ballantyne could per- 
suade him to substitute that title for Herries. The book was 
published in June 1824, and was received at the time some- 
what coldly, though it has since, I believe, found more justice. 
The reintroduction of the adventurous hero of 1745, in the 
dulness and dimness of advancing age and fortunes hopelessly 
blighted — and the presenting him — with whose romantic 
portraiture at an earlier period historical truth had been so 
admirably blended — as the moving principal of events, not 
only entirely, but notoriously imaginary — this was a rash ex- 
periment, and could not fail to suggest disadvantageous com- 
parisons ; yet, had there been no Waverley, I am persuaded the 
fallen and faded Ascanius of Redgauntlet would have been 
universally pronounced a masterpiece. About the secondary 
personages there could be little ground for controversy. What 
novel or drama has surpassed the grotesquely ludicrous, dashed 
with the profound pathos, of Peter Peebles — the most tragic 
of farces ? — or the still sadder merriment of that human ship- 
wreck, Nantie Ewart ? — or Wandering Willie — and his Tale 
— the wildest and most rueful of dreams told by such a person, 
and in such a dialect ? With posterity, even apart from these 
grand features, this novel will yield in interest to none of the 
series ; for it contains perhaps more of Allan Fairford's personal 
experiences than any other of them, or even than all the rest 
put together. 

This year — mirabile dictu! — produced but one novel; and 
it is not impossible that the author had taken deeply into his 
mind, though he would not immediately act upon them, certain 
hints about the danger of "overcropping," which have been 

431 



432 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

alluded to as dropping from his publishers in 1823. He had, 
however, a labour of some weight to go through in a second edi- 
tion of his Swift. The additions to this reprint were numerous, 
and he corrected his notes, and the Life of the Dean through- 
out, with care. He also threw off several reviews and other 
petty miscellanies — among the rest his memorable tribute to 
the memory of Lord Byron, written immediately after the news 
of the catastrophe at Missolonghi reached him. 

The arrangement of his library and museum was, however, 
the main care of the summer ; and his woods were now in such 
a state that his most usual exercise out of doors was thinning 
them. He was an expert as well as powerful wielder of the 
axe, and competed with his ablest subalterns as to the paucity 
of blows by which a tree could be brought down. The wood 
rang ever and anon with laughter while he shared their labours ; 
and if he had taken, as he every now and then did, a whole 
day with them, they were sure to be invited home to Abbots- 
ford, to sup gaily at Tom Purdie's. One of Sir Walter's trans- 
atlantic admirers, by the way, sent him a complete assortment 
of the tools employed in clearing the Back-woods, and both he 
and Tom made efforts to attain dexterity in using them ; but 
neither succeeded. The American axe, having a longer shaft 
than ours, and a much smaller and narrower cutting-piece, was, 
in Tom's opinion, only fit for paring a kebbuck {i.e. a cheese of 
skimmed milk). The old-fashioned weapon was soon resumed, 
and the belt that bore it had accommodation also for a chisel, 
a hammer, and a small saw. Among all the numberless por- 
traits, why was there not one representing the " Belted Knight," 
accoutred with these appurtenances of his forest-craft, jogging 
over the heather on a breezy morning, with Thomas at his stir- 
rup, and Maicla stalking in advance ? 

Notwithstanding numberless letters to Terry about his 
upholstery, the far greater part of it was manufactured at 
home. The most of the articles from London were only mod- 
els for the use of two or three neat-handed carpenters whom 
he had discovered in the villages near him ; and he watched 
and directed their operations as carefully as a George Bullock 
could have done ; and the results were such as even Bullock 
might have admired. The great table in the library, for 
example (a most complex and beautiful one), was done entirely 
in the room where it now stands, by Joseph Shillinglaw of 
Darnick — the Sheriff planning and studying every turn as 
zealously as ever an old lady pondered the development of an 
embroidered cushion. The hangings and curtains, too, were 



WORK AT ABBOTSFORD. 433 

chiefly the work of a little hunch-backed tailor, by name 
William Goodf ellow — (save at Abbotsf ord, where he answered 
to Robin) — who occupied a cottage on Scott's farm of the 
Broomielees ; one of the race who creep from homestead to 
homestead, welcomed wherever they appear by housewife and 
handmaiden, the great gossips and newsmen of the parish, — 
in Scottish nomenclature cardooers. Proudly and earnestly 
did all these vassals toil in his service ; and I think it was one 
of them that, when some stranger asked a question about his 
personal demeanour, answered in these simple words — " Sir 
Walter speaks to every man as if they were blood-relations." 
Not long after he had completed his work at Abbotsford, little 
Goodfellow fell sick, and as his cabin was near Chiefswood, I 
had many opportunities of observing the Sheriff's kind atten- 
tion to him in his affliction. I can never forget the evening 
on which the poor tailor died. When Scott entered the hovel 
he found everything silent, and inferred from the looks of the 
good women in attendance that their patient had fallen asleep, 
and that they feared his sleep was the final one. He mur- 
mured some syllables of kind regret; — at the sound of his 
voice the dying tailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and 
wistfully sat up, clasping his hands with an expression of 
rapturous gratefulness and devotion, that, in the midst of 
deformity, disease, pain, and wretchedness, was at once beau- 
tiful and sublime. He cried with a loud voice, "The Lord 
bless and reward you ! " and expired with the effort. 

In the painting too Sir Walter personally directed every- 
thing. He abominated the commonplace daubing of walls, 
panels, doors, and window-boards, with coats of white, blue, or 
grey, and thought that sparklings and edgings of gilding only 
made their baldness and poverty more noticeable. Except in 
the drawing-room, which he abandoned to Lady Scott's taste, 
all the roofs were in appearance at least of antique carved oak, 
relieved by coats of arms duly blazoned at the intersections of 
beams, and resting on cornices to the eye of the same material, 
but composed of casts in plaster of Paris, after the foliage, the 
flowers, the grotesque monsters and dwarfs, and sometimes the 
beautiful heads of nuns and confessors, on which he had doated 
from infancy among the cloisters of Melrose and Eoslin. In 
the painting of these things, also, he had instruments who con- 
sidered it as a labour of love. The master-limner, in particular 
(Mr. D. R. Hay), had a devoted attachment to his person ; and 
this was not wonderful, for he, in fact, owed a prosperous 
fortune to Scott's kind and sagacious counsel tendered at the 
2p 



434 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

very outset of his career. As a printer's apprentice, he had 
attracted notice by his attempts with the pencil, and Sir Walter 
was called upon, after often admiring his skill in representing 
dogs and horses and the like, to assist him with his advice, 
as ambition had been stirred, and the youth would fain give 
himself to the regular training of an artist. Scott took him 
into his room, and conversed with him at some length. He 
explained the difficulties and perils of this aspiring walk ; and 
ended with saying, " It has often struck me that some clever 
fellow might make a good hit, if, in place of enrolling him- 
self among the future Raphaels and Vandykes of the Eoyal 
Academy, he should resolutely set himself to introducing some- 
thing of a more elegant style of house-painting." 

Meantime, the progress of Abbotsford stimulated both friends 
and strangers to contribute articles of curiosity towards its 
adornment. Mr. Train's gift of this year was a handsome 
chair made from the oak of the house of Eobroyston, the tra- 
ditionary scene of the betrayal of Wallace by Menteith. This 
Sir Walter placed in his own sanctum: where there was no 
other chair but the one on which he sat at work. But the 
arrivals were endless : among the rest came, I think within 
the same week, a copy of Montfaucon's Antiquities, in fifteen 
volumes folio, richly bound in scarlet, the gift of King George 
IV., and a set of the Variorum Classics, in a hundred and forty 
volumes, together with a couple of really splendid carved 
chairs, the spoils of some Venetian palace, from Mr. Constable. 
These were his tokens of gratitude, by the way, for the MSS. 
of the Novels, which, on Lord Kinnedder's death, Scott drew 
from that friend's secret repositories, and transferred, with 
strict injunctions of watchfulness, to his delighted publisher. 

Towards the close of this year, Sir Walter heard of the 
death of his dear brother Thomas, whose only son had been 
for some time domesticated at Abbotsford. In October, his 
own son Charles began his residence at Brasenose College, 
Oxford. The adoption of this plan implied finally dropping 
an appointment in the civil service of the East India Company, 
which had been placed at his disposal by Lord Bathurst in 1820 ; 
a step which, were there any doubt on that subject, would alone 
be sufficient to prove that the young gentleman's father at this 
time considered his own worldly fortunes as in a highly pros- 
perous situation. A writership in India is early independence ; 
— in the case of a son of Scott, so conducting himself as not 
to discredit the name he inherited, it could hardly have failed 
to be early wealth. And Sir Walter was the last man to de- 



ABBOTSFORD COMPLETED. 435 

prive his boy of such safe and easy prospects of worldly advan- 
tage, turning him over to the precarious chances of a learned 
profession in Great Britain, unless in the confidence that his 
own resources were so great as to render ultimate failure in 
such a career a matter of no primary importance. 

By Christmas the Tales of the Crusaders were begun, and 
Abbotsford was at last rid of carpenters and upholsterers. 
Young Walter arrived to see his father's house complete, and 
filled with a larger company than it could ever before accom- 
modate. One of the guests was Captain Basil Hall, always an 
agreeable one: a traveller and a savant, full of stories and 
theories, inexhaustible in spirits, curiosity, and enthusiasm. 
Sir Walter was surprised and a little annoyed on observing 
that the Captain kept a note-book on his knee while at table, 
but made no remark. He kindly allowed me, in 1836, to read 
his Abbotsford Diaries, &c, and make what use of them I 
might then think proper. On the present occasion I must give 
but a specimen : — 

" On coming to a broad path in the middle of the woods, we 
took notice of a finger-post, on which was written ' The Hod to 
Selkirk.' We made some remark about Tom's orthography, 
upon which he laughed, and said that that finger-post had 
gained him great popularity in the neighbourhood. ' I cannot 
say,' he remarked, ' that I had any such view when I ordered 
it to be put up. The public road, it is true, is not far off, and 
this leads through the very centre of my grounds, but I never 
could bring myself to make that a reason for excluding any 
person who finds it agreeable or advantageous to take over the 
hill if he likes. But although my practice in this respect had 
always been well known, the actual admission of it, the avowed 
establishment of it as a sort of right, by sticking up the finger- 
post, was received as a kind of boon, and I got a world of 
credit for a thing which had certainly not any popularity for 
its object. Nevertheless,' he continued, 'I have no scruple in 
saying that what I did deserved the good people's acknowledg- 
ment ; and I seriously disapprove of those proprietors who act 
on a different principle in these matters. Nothing on earth 
would induce me to put up boards threatening prosecution, or 
cautioning one's fellow-creatures to beware of man-traps and 
spring-guns. I hold that all such things are not only in the 
highest degree offensive and hurtful to the feelings of people 
whom it is every way important to conciliate, but that they 
are also quite inefficient — and I will venture to say, that not 
one of my young trees has ever been cut, nor a fence trodden 



436 LIFE OF SIB WALTEB SCOTT. 

down, or any kind of damage done in consequence of the free 
access which, all the world has to my place. Round the house, 
of course, there is a set of walks set apart and kept private for 
the ladies — but over all the rest of my land any one may rove 
as he likes. I please myself with the reflection that many 
people of taste may be indulging their fancies in these grounds, 
and I often recollect how much of Burns' s inspiration was 
probably due to his having near him the Avoods of Ballochmyle 
to ramble through at his will when he was a ragged callant.' 
Some one talked of the pains taken to provide the poor with 
receipts for making good dishes out of their ordinary messes. 
' I dislike all such interference,' he said — ' all your domiciliary, 
kind, impertinent visits ; — they are all pretty much felt like 
insults, and do no manner of good : let people go on in their own 
way, in God's name. How would you like to have a nobleman 
coming to you to teach you how to dish up your beefsteak into 
a French kickshaw ? Let the poor alone in their domestic 
habits : protect them, treat them kindly, trust them ; but let 
them enjoy in quiet their dish of porridge, and their potatoes 
and herrings, or whatever it may be — for anysake don't tor- 
ment them with your fashionable soups. And take care,' he 
added, ' not to give them anything gratis ; except when they 
are under the gripe of immediate misery — what they think 
misery — consider it as a sin to do anything that can tend to 
make them lose the precious feeling of independence. For 
my part, I very very rarely give anything away. Now, for 
instance, this pile of branches which has been thinned out 
this morning, is placed here for sale for the poor people's 
fires, and I am perfectly certain they are more grateful to 
me for selling it at the price I do (which, you may be sure, is 
no great matter), than if I were to give them ten times the 
quantity for nothing. Every shilling collected in this and 
other similar manners, goes to a fund which pays the doctor 
for his attendance on them when they are sick ; and this is my 
notion of charity.' — ' I make not a rule to be on intimate 
terms,' he told us, 'with all my neighbours — that would be 
an idle thing to do. Some are good — some not so good, and 
it would be foolish and ineffectual to treat all with the same 
cordiality ; but to live in harmony with all is quite easy, and 
surely very pleasant. Some of them may be rough and gruff 
at first, but all men, if kindly used, come about at last, and by 
going on gently, and never being eager or noisy about what I 
want, and letting things glide on leisurely, I always find in the 
end that the object is gained on which I have set my heart, 



EXTRACTS FROM HALL'S DIARY. 437 

either by exchange or purchase, or by some sort of compromise 
by which both parties are obliged, and good-will begot if it did 
not exist before — strengthened if it did exist.' — I have never 
seen any person on more delightful terms with his family. 
The youngest of his nephews and nieces can joke with him, 
and seem at all times perfectly at ease in his presence — his 
coming into the room only increases the laugh, and never 
checks it — he either joins in what is going on or passes. No 
one notices him any more than if he were one of themselves) 
These are things which cannot be got up." 

Another entry says : — " Last night there was a dance in 
honour of Sir Walter Scott's eldest son, who had recently 
come from Sandhurst College, after having passed through 
some military examinations with great credit. We had a great 
clan of Scotts. There were no less than nine Scotts of Harden, 
and ten of other families. There were others besides from the 
neighbourhood — at least half-a-dozen Fergussons, with the 
jolly Sir Adam at their head — Lady Fergusson, her niece 
Miss Jobson, the pretty heiress of Lochore," &c. But with 
all his acuteness, Hall does not seem to have caught any sus- 
picion of the real purpose and meaning of this ball. That 
evening was one of the very proudest and happiest in Scott's 
brilliant existence. Its festivities were held in honour of the 
young lady, whom the Captain names cursorily as " the pretty 
heiress of Lochore." It was known to not a few of the party, 
and I should have supposed it might have been surmised by 
the rest, that those halls were displayed for the first time in 
all their splendour, on an occasion not less interesting to the 
Poet than the conclusion of a treaty of marriage between the 
heir of his name and fortunes, and the amiable niece of his 
friends Sir Adam and Lady Fergusson. It was the first reg- 
ular ball given at Abbotsford, and the last. Nay, I believe 
nobody has ever danced under that roof since then. I myself 
never again saw the whole range of apartments thrown open 
for the reception of company except once — on the day of Sir 
Walter Scott's funeral. 

The lady's fortune was a handsome one, and her guardians 
exerted the powers with which they were invested, by requir- 
ing that the marriage-contract should settle Abbotsford (with 
reservation of Sir Walter's own liferent) upon the affianced 
parties. To this condition he gave a ready assent, and the 
moment he had signed the deed, he exclaimed — "I have now 
parted with my lands with more pleasure than I ever derived 
from the acquisition or possession of them ; and if I be spared 



438 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

for ten years, I think I may promise to settle as much more 
again upon these young folks." It was well for himself and 
his children that his auguries, which failed so miserably as to 
the matter of worldly wealth, were destined to no disappoint- 
ment as respected considerations of a higher description. 

The marriage took place at Edinburgh on the 3d day of 
February, and when the young couple left Abbotsford two or 
three weeks afterwards, Sir Walter promised to visit them at 
their regimental quarters in Ireland in the course of the sum- 
mer. Before he fulfilled that purpose he had the additional 
pleasure of seeing his son gazetted as Captain in the King's 
Hussars — a step for which Sir Walter advanced the large 
sum of L.3500. 

In May, Terry, and his able brother comedian, Frederick 
Yates, entered on a negotiation, which terminated in their be- 
coming joint lessees and managers of the Adelphi Theatre. 
Terry requested Scott and Ballantyne to assist him on this 
occasion by some advance of money, or if that should be in- 
convenient, by the use of their credit. They were both very 
anxious to serve him ; but Sir Walter had a poor opinion of 
speculations in theatrical property ; and, moreover, entertained 
suspicions, too well justified by the result, that Terry was not 
much qualified for conducting the pecuniary part of such a 
business. Ultimately Ballantyne, who shared these scruples, 
became Terry's security for a considerable sum (I think 
L.500), and Sir Walter pledged his credit in like manner to 
the extent of L.1250. He had, in the sequel, to pay off both 
this sum and that for which the printer had engaged. 

But at this time the chief subject of concern was a grand 
scheme of revolution in the whole art and traffic of publish- 
ing, which Constable first opened in detail one Saturday at 
Abbotsford — none being present except Sir Walter, Ballan- 
tyne, and myself. After dinner, there was a little pause of 
expectation, and the brave schemer suddenly started in meclias 
res, saying : — " Literary genius may, or may not, have done 
its best; but the trade are in the cradle." Scott eyed the 
florid bookseller's beaming countenance, and the solemn stare 
with which the equally portly printer was listening, and push- 
ing round the bottles with a hearty chuckle, bade me " Give 
our twa sonsie babbles a clrap mother's milk." Constable 
sucked in fresh inspiration, and proceeded to say that, wild 
as we might think him, certain new plans, of which we had 
all already heard some hints, had been suggested by, and 
were in fact mainly grounded upon, a sufficiently prosaic au- 



constable's miscellany projected. 439 

tliority — namely, the annual schedule of assessed taxes, a 
copy of which interesting document he drew from his pocket, 
and substituted for his UOyley. It was copiously diversified, 
"text and margent," by figures and calculations in his own 
handwriting, which I for one might have regarded with less 
reverence, had I known at the time this "great arithmeti- 
cian's " rooted aversion and contempt for all examination of 
his own balance-sheet. He had, however, taken vast pains to 
fill in the number of persons who might fairly be supposed to 
pay the taxes for each separate article of luxury, armorial bear- 
ings, hunters, racers, four-wheeled carriages, &c, &c. ; and hav- 
ing demonstrated that hundreds of thousands held, as necessary 
to their comfort and station, articles upon articles of which 
their forefathers never dreamt, said, that our self-love never 
deceived us more grossly than when we fancied our notions as 
to the matter of books had advanced in at all a corresponding 
proportion. " On the contrary," cried Constable, " I am sat- 
isfied that the demand for Shakspeare's plays, contemptible 
as we hold it to have been, in the time of Elizabeth and James, 
was more creditable to the classes who really indulged in any 
sort of elegance then, than the sale of Childe Harold or 
Waverley is to this nineteenth century." 

Scott helped him on by interposing, that at that moment 
he had a rich valley crowded with handsome houses under 
his view, and yet much doubted whether any laird within 
ten miles spent ten pounds per annum on the literature of 
the day. "No," said Constable, "there is no market among 
them that's worth one's thinking about. They are contented 
with a review or a magazine, or at best with a paltry sub- 
scription to some circulating library forty miles off. But if 
I live for half-a-dozen years, I'll make it as impossible that 
there should not be a good library in every decent house in 
Britain as that the shepherd's ingle-nook should want the 
said poke. Ay, and what's that ? " he continued, warming and 
puffing; "why should the ingle-nook itself want a shelf for 
the novels?" — "I see your drift, my man," says Sir Walter; 
— " you're for being like Billy Pitt in Gilray's print — you 
want to get into the salt-box yourself." — " Yes," he responded 
(using a favourite adjuration) — "I have hitherto been think- 
ing only of the wax lights, but before I'm a twelvemonth 
older I shall have my hand upon the tallow." — " Troth," says 
Scott, "you are indeed likely to be 'The grand Napoleon of 
the realms of print?" — "If you outlive me," says Constable, 
with a regal smile, " I bespeak that line for my tombstone, 



440 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

but, in the meantime, may I presume to ask you to be my 
right-band man when I open my campaign of Marengo ? I 
have now settled my outline of operations — a three shilling 
or half-crown volume every month, which must and shall sell, 
not by thousands or tens of thousands, but by hundreds of 
thousands — ay. by millions ! Twelve volumes in the year, a 
halfpenny of profit upon every copy of which will make me 
richer than the possession of all the copyrights of all the 
quartos that ever were, or will be, hot-pressed! — twelve vol- 
umes, so good that millions must wish to have them, and so 
cheap that every butcher's callant may have them, if he pleases 
to let me tax him sixpence a week ! " 

Many a previous consultation, and many a solitary medita- 
tion, too, prompted Scott's answer. — " Your plan," said he, 
" cannot fail, provided the books be really good ; but you 
must not start until you have not only leading columns, but 
depth upon depth of reserve in thorough order. I am willing 
to do my part in this grand enterprise. Often, of late, have 
I felt that -the vein of fiction was nearly worked out ; often, 
as you all know, have I been thinking seriously of turning 
my hand to history. I am of opinion that historical writing 
has no more been adapted to the demands of the increased 
circles among which literature does already find its way, than 
you allege as to the shape and price of books in general. 
What say you to taking the field with a Life of the other 
]STapoleon ? " ■ 

The reader does not need to be told that the series of cheap 
volumes, subsequently issued under the title of " Constable's 
Miscellany," was the scheme on which this great bookseller 
was brooding. Before he left Abbotsford, it was arranged 
that the first number of this collection should consist of one- 
half of Waverley ; the second, of the first section of a " Life 
of Xapoleon Buonaparte by the author of Waverley ; " that this 
Life shoidd be comprised in four of these numbers ; and that, 
until the whole series of his novels had been issued, a volume 
every second month, in this new and uncostly form, he should 
keep the Ballantyne press going with a series of historical 
works, to be issued on the alternate months. 

Some circumstances in the progress of the Tales of the 
Crusaders, now on the eve of publication, must have been 
uppermost in Scott's mind when he met Constable's proposals 
with so much alacrity. The stoiy of The Betrothed — (to 
which he was mainly prompted by the lively conversation on 
Welsh antiquities of Archdeacon Williams) — found no favour 



TALES OF THE CRUSADERS PUBLISHED. 441 

as it advanced with Ballantyne ; and so heavily did his critical 
remonstrances weigh on the author, that he at length deter- 
mined to cancel it for ever. The tale, however, all but a 
chapter or two, had been printed off, and both publisher and 
printer paused before committing such a mass to the flames. 
The sheets were hung up meanwhile, and Scott began The 
Talisman — of which also James criticised the earlier chap- 
ters in such a strain that Scott was deeply vexed. "Is it 
wise," he wrote, " to mend a dull overloaded fire by heaping 
on a shovelful of wet coals ? " and hinted some doubts whether 
he should proceed. He did so, however ; the critical printer 
by degrees warmed to the story, and he at last pronounced 
The Talisman such a masterpiece, that The Betrothed might 
venture abroad under its wing. Sir Walter was now reluctant 
on that subject, and said he would rather write two more new 
novels than the few pages necessary to complete his unfortu- 
nate Betrothed. But while he hesitated, the German news- 
papers announced " a new romance by the author of Waverley " 
as about to issue from the press of Leipzig. There was some 
ground for suspecting that a set of the suspended sheets might 
have been purloined and sold to a pirate, and this considera- 
tion put an end to his scruples. And when the German did 
publish the fabrication, entitled Walladmor, it could no longer 
be doubtful that some reader of Scott's sheets had communi- 
cated at least the fact that he was breaking ground in Wales. 

Early in June, then, the Tales of the Crusaders were put 
forth; and, as Mr. Ballantyne had predicted, the brightness 
of the Talisman dazzled the eyes of the million as to the 
defects of the twin-story. Few of these publications had a 
more enthusiastic greeting ; and Scott's literary plans were, 
as the reader will see reason to infer, considerably modified in 
consequence of the new burst of applause which attended the 
brilliant procession of his Saladin and Goeur de Lion. 

To return for a moment to our merry conclave at Abbots- 
ford. Constable's vast chapter of embryo schemes was dis- 
cussed more leisurely on the following Monday morning, when 
we drove to the crags of Smailholm and the Abbey of Dry- 
burgh, both poet and publisher talking over the past and the 
future course of their lives, and agreeing, as far as I could 
penetrate, that the years to come were likely to be more pros- 
perous than any they had as yet seen. In the evening, too, 
this being his friend's first visit since the mansion had been 
completed, Scott (though there were no ladies and few ser- 
vants) had the hall and library lighted up, that he might shew 



442 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

him everything to the most sparkling advantage. With what 
serenity did he walk about those apartments, handling books, 
expounding armour and pictures, and rejoicing in the Babylon 
which he had built ! 

He began, without delay, what was meant to be a very 
short preliminary sketch of the French Revolution, prior to the 
appearance of his hero upon the scene of action. This, he 
thought, might be done almost currente calamo ; for his recol- 
lection of all the great events as they occurred was vivid, and 
he had not failed to peruse every book of any considerable im- 
portance on these subjects as it issued from the press. He 
apprehended the necessity, on the other hand, of more labori- 
ous study in the way of reading than he had for many years 
had occasion for, before he could enter with advantage upon 
Buonaparte's military career; and Constable accordingly set 
about collecting a new library of printed materials, which con- 
tinued from day to day pouring in upon him, till his little par- 
lour in Castle Street looked more like an auctioneer's premises 
than an author's. The first waggon delivered itself of about 
a hundred huge folios of the Moniteur; and London, Paris, 
Amsterdam, and Brussels, were all laid under contribution to 
meet the bold demands of his purveyor. 

In the meantime he advanced with his Introduction ; and, 
catching fire as the theme expanded before him, had so soon 
several chapters in his desk, without having travelled over half 
the ground assigned for them, that Constable saw it would 
be in vain to hope for the completion of the work within four 
duodecimos. They resolved that it should be published, in the 
first instance, as a separate book, in four volumes of the same 
size with the Tales of the Crusaders, but with more pages and 
more letterpress to each page. Scarcely had this been settled 
before it became obvious that four such volumes would never 
suffice ; and the number was week after week extended — with 
corresponding alterations as to the rate of the author's pay- 
ment. Constable still considered the appearance of the second 
edition of the Life of Napoleon in his Miscellany as the great 
point on which the fortunes of that undertaking were to turn ; 
and its commencement was in consequence adjourned; which, 
however, must have been the case at any rate, as the stock of 
the Novels was greater than he had calculated; and some 
interval must elapse, before, with fairness to the retail trade, 
he could throw that long series into any cheaper form. 

Before the Court rose in July, Sir Walter had made consid- 
erable progress in his Sketch of the French Eevolution ; but it 



TOUR IN IRELAND. 443 

was agreed that he should make his promised excursion to 
Ireland before any MS. went to the printers. He had seen no 
more of the sister island than Dunluce and the Giant's Cause- 
way; his curiosity about the scenery and the people was 
lively; and besides the great object of seeing his son and 
daughter-in-law under their own roof, and the scarcely inferior 
pleasure of another meeting with Miss Edgeworth, he looked 
forward to renewing his acquaintance with several accom- 
plished persons who had been serviceable to him in his labours 
upon Swift. But, illustriously as Ireland has contributed to 
the English Library, he had always been accustomed to hear 
that almost no books were now published there, and fewer sold 
than in any other country calling itself civilised ; and he had 
naturally concluded that apathy and indifference prevailed as 
to literature itself, and of course as to literary men. He had 
not, therefore, formed the remotest anticipation of the kind of 
reception which awaited him. Miss Anne Scott and myself 
accompanied him. We left Edinburgh on the 8th of July in 
a light open carriage, and embarked at Glasgow for Belfast. 
The steam-boat, besides a crowd of passengers of all possible 
classes, was lumbered with a cargo offensive enough to the eye 
and the nostrils, but still more disagreeable from the antici- 
pations and reflections it could not fail to suggest. Hardly had 
our carriage been lashed on the deck before it disappeared from 
our view amidst mountainous packages of old clothes; — the 
cast-off raiment of the Scotch beggars was on its way to a land 
where beggary is the staple of life. A voyage down the Firth 
of Clyde, however, is enough to make anybody happy : no- 
where can the home tourist, at all events, behold, in the course 
of one day, such a succession and variety of beautiful, roman- 
tic, and majestic scenery : on one hand, dark mountains and 
castellated shores — on the other, rich groves and pastures, in- 
terspersed with elegant villas and thriving towns — the bright 
estuary between, alive with shipping, and diversified with 
islands. It may be supposed how delightful such a voyage 
was on a fine day in July, with Scott, always as full of glee on 
any trip as a schoolboy ; crammed with all the traditions and 
legends of every place we passed ; and too happy to pour them 
out for the entertainment of his companions on deck. After 
dinner, too, he was the charm of the table. A worthy old 
Bailie of Glasgow sat by him, and shared fully in the general 
pleasure ; though his particular source of interest and satisfac- 
tion was, that he had got into such close quarters with a live 
Sheriff and Clerk of Session, — and this gave him the oppor- 



444 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

tunity of discussing sundry knotty points of police law, as to 
which, our steerage passengers might perhaps have been more 
curious than most of those admitted to the symposium of the 
cabin. Sir Walter, however, was as ready for the rogueries of 
the Broomielaw, as for the mystic antiquities of Balclutha, or the 
discomfiture of the Norsemen at Largs, or Bruce's adventures 
in Arran. The Bailie insisted for a second bowl of punch, 
and volunteered to be the manufacturer ; " for," quoth he slily, 
" I am reckoned a fair hand, though not equal to my father the 
deacon." Scott smiled in acquiescence. 

We reached Belfast next morning. When we halted at Drogh- 
eda, a retired officer of dragoons, discovering that the party 
was Sir Walter's, sent in his card, with a polite offer to attend 
him over the field of the battle of the Boyne, about two miles 
off, which of course was accepted; — Sir Walter rejoicing the 
veteran's heart by his vigorous recitation of the famous ballad 
{The Crossing of the Water), as we proceeded to the ground, 
and the eager and intelligent curiosity with which he received 
his explanations of it. 

On Thursday the 14th we reached Dublin in time for dinner, 
and found young Walter and his bride established in one of 
those large and noble houses in St. Stephen's Green (the most 
extensive square in Europe), the founders of which little 
dreamt that they should ever be let at an easy rate as garrison 
lodgings. Never can I forget the fond joy and pride with 
which Sir Walter looked round him, as he sat for the first time 
at his son's table. I could not but recall Pindar's lines, in 
which, wishing to paint the gentlest rapture of felicity, he 
describes an old man with a foaming wine-cup in his hand at 
his child's wedding-feast. 

In the evening arrived a deputation from the Royal Society 
of Dublin, inviting Sir Walter to a public dinner; and next 
morning he found on his breakfast-table a letter from the Prov- 
ost of Trinity College (Dr. Kyle, afterwards Bishop of Cork), 
announcing that the University desired to pay him the high 
compliment of a degree of Doctor of Laws by diploma. The 
Archbishop of Dublin (Dr. Magee) was among the earliest 
of his visitors ; another was the Eight Honourable Anthony 
Blake, who was the bearer of a message from the Marquis 
Wellesley, then Lord-Lieutenant, inviting him to dine next day 
at his Excellency's country residence, Malahide Castle. It 
would be endless to enumerate the distinguished persons who, 
morning after morning, crowded his levee in St. Stephen's 
Green. The courts of law were not then sitting, and most of 



TOUR IN IRELAND. 445 

the judges were out of town ; but all the other great function- 
aries, and the leading noblemen and gentlemen of the city and 
its neighbourhood, of whatever sect or party, hastened to tender 
every conceivable homage and hospitality. But all this was 
less surprising to the companions of his journey (though, to 
say the truth, we had, no more than himself, counted on such 
eager enthusiasm among any class of Irish society), than the 
demonstrations of respect which, after the first clay or two, 
awaited him, wherever he moved, at the hands of the less ele- 
vated orders of the Dublin population. If his carriage was 
recognised at the door of any public establishment, the street 
was sure to be crowded before he came out again, so as to make 
his departure as slow as a procession. When he entered a 
street, the watchword was passed down both sides like light- 
ning, and the shopkeepers and their wives stood bowing and 
curtseying all the way down. 

From Dublin, we made an excursion of some days into Wick- 
low, halting for a night at the villa of the Surgeon-General, 
Sir Philip Crampton, who kindly did the honours of Lough 
Breagh and the Dargle ; and then for two or three at Old Con- 
naught, near Bray, the seat of the Attorney-General, after- 
wards Lord Plunkett. Here there was a large and brilliant 
party assembled ; and from hence, under the guidance of Mr. 
Attorney and his amiable family, we perambulated to all pos- 
sible advantage the classical resorts of the Devil's Glyn, Eos- 
anna, Kilruddery, and Glendalough, with its seven churches, 
and St. Kevin's Bed — the scene of the fate of Cathleen, cele- 
brated in Moore's ballad — 

" By that lake whose gloomy shore 
Skylark never warbles o'er," &c. 

It is a hole in the sheer surface of the rock, in which two or 
three people might sit. The difficulty of getting into this place 
has been exaggerated, as also the danger, for it would only be 
falling thirty or forty feet into very deep water. Yet I never 
was more pained than when Scott, in spite of all remonstrances, 
would make his way to it, crawling along the precipice. 
After he was gone, Plunkett told the female guide he was a 
poet. Cathleen treated this with indignation, as a quiz of Mr. 
Attorney's. — "Poet!" said she; "the devil a bit of him — 
but an honourable gentleman : he gave me half-a-crown." 

On the 1st of August we proceeded from Dublin to Edge- 
worthstown, the party being now reinforced by Captain and 



446 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Mrs. Scott, and also by the delightful addition of the Surgeon- 
General. A happy meeting it was : we remained there for 
several days, making excursions to Loch Oel and other scenes 
of interest in Longford and the adjoining counties; the gentry 
everywhere exerting themselves with true Irish zeal to sig- 
nalise their affectionate pride in their illustrious country- 
woman, and their appreciation of her guest ; while her brother, 
Mr. Lovell Edgeworth, had his classical mansion filled every 
evening with a succession of distinguished friends, the elite of 
Ireland. Here, above all, we had the opportunity of seeing in 
what universal respect and comfort a gentleman's family may 
live in that country, and in far from its most favoured district, 
provided only they live there habitually, and do their duty as 
the friends and guardians of those among whom Providence 
has appointed their proper place. Here we found neither mud 
hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages and smiling 
faces all about. Here there was a very large school in the 
village, of which masters and pupils were in a nearly equal 
proportion Protestants and Eoman Catholics — the Protestant 
squire himself making it a regular part of his daily business 
to visit the scene of their operations, and strengthen authority 
and enforce discipline by his personal superintendence. It is 
a curious enough coincidence that Oliver Goldsmith and Maria 
Edgeworth should both have derived their early love and 
knowledge of Irish character and manners from the same 
identical district. He received part of his education at this 
very school of Edgeworthstown ; and Pallasmore (the locus 
cui nomen est Pallas of Johnson's epitaph), the little hamlet 
where the author of the Vicar of Wakefield first saw the light, 
is still, as it was in his time, the property of the Edgeworths. 
It may well be imagined with what lively interest Sir Walter 
surveyed the scenery with which so many of the proudest 
recollections of Ireland must ever be associated, and how 
curiously he studied the rural manners it presented to him, 
in the hope (not disappointed) of being able to trace some 
of his friend's bright creations to their first hints and germs. 
On the delight with which he contemplated her position in 
the midst of her own domestic circle, I need say still less. 
The reader is aware by this time how deeply he condemned 
and pitied the conduct and fate of those who, gifted with 
pre-eminent talents for the instruction and entertainment of 
their species at large, fancy themselves entitled to neglect 
those every-day duties and charities of life, from the mere 
shadowing of which in imaginary pictures the genius of poetry 



TOUR IN IRELAND. 447 

and romance has always reaped its highest and purest, per- 
haps its only true and immortal honours. In Maria he nailed 
a sister spirit — one who, at the summit of literary fame, took 
the same modest, just, and, let me add, Christian view of the 
relative importance of the feelings, the obligations, and the 
hopes in which we are all equally partakers, and those talents 
and accomplishments which may seem, to vain and short- 
sighted eyes, sufficient to constitute their possessors into an 
order and species apart from the rest of their kind. Such 
fantastic conceits found no shelter with either of these power- 
ful minds. I was then a young man, and I cannot forget how 
much I was struck at the time by some words that fell from 
one of them, when, in the course of a walk in the park at 
Edgeworthstown, I happened to use some phrase which con- 
veyed (though not perhaps meant to do so) the impression 
that I suspected Poets and Novelists of being a good deal 
accustomed to look at life and the world only as materials 
for art. A soft and pensive shade came over Scott's face as 
he said — "I fear you have some very young ideas in your 
head : — are you not too apt to measure things by some refer- 
ence to literature — to disbelieve that anybody can be worth 
much care, who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or 
taste for it ? God help us ! what a poor world this would be 
if that were the true doctrine ! I have read books enough, 
and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and 
splendidly cultivated minds, too, in my time; but I assure 
you, I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor 
uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of severe 
yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speak- 
ing their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of 
friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the 
pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel and respect 
our real calling and destiny, unless Ave have taught ourselves 
to consider everything as moonshine, compared Avith the edu- 
cation of the heart." Maria did not listen to this Avithout 
some water in her eyes — (her tears are always ready when 
any generous string is touched; — for, as Pope says, "the 
finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the easiest ; ") — 
but she brushed them gaily aside, and said, "You see how 
it is — Dean Swift said he had written his books in order 
that people might learn to treat him like a great lord — Sir 
Walter Avrites his in order that he may be able to treat his 
people as a great lord ought to do." 

Lest I should forget to mention it, I put doAvn here a rebuke 



448 LIFE OF SIR WALTEB SCOTT. 

which, later in his life, Sir Walter once gave in my hearing to 
his daughter Anne. She happened to say of something, I for- 
get what, that she could not abide it — it was vulgar. "My 
love," said her father, " yon speak like a very young lady ; do 
yon know, after all, the meaning of this word vulgar? "lis 
only common ; nothing that is common, except wickedness, can 
deserve to be spoken of in a tone of contempt ; and when yon 
have lived to my years, yon will be disposed to agree with me 
in thanking God that nothing really worth having or caring 
about in this world is uncommon." 

Miss Edgeworth, her sister Harriet, and her brother William, 
were easily persuaded to join onr party for the rest of our Irish 
travels. We were anxious to make the best of our way to the 
Lakes of Killarney ; but posting was not to be very rapidly 
accomplished in those regions by so large a company as had 
now collected — and we were more agreeably delayed by the 
hospitalities of Miss Edgeworth's old friends, and Sir Walter's 
new ones, at various mansions on our line of route — of which 
I must note especially Judge Moore's, at Lamberton, near 
Maryborough, because Sir Walter pronounced its beneficence 
to be even beyond the usual Irish scale ; for, on reaching our 
next halting place, which was an indifferent country inn, we 
discovered that we need be in no alarm as to our dinner at all 
events, the Judge's people having privately packed up in one 
of the carriages a pickled salmon, a most lordly venison pasty, 
and half-a-dozen bottles of champaign. But most of these 
houses seemed, like the Judge's, to have been constructed on 
the principle of the Peri Banou's tent. They seemed to have 
room not only for the lion and lioness, and their respective 
tails, but for all in the neighbourhood who could be held 
worthy to inspect them at feeding-time. 

It was a succession of festive gaiety wherever we halted ; 
and in the course of our movements we saw many castles, 
churches, and ruins of all sorts — with more than enough of 
mountain, wood, lake, and river, to have made a similar prog- 
ress in perhaps any other part of Europe truly delightful. 
But those to whom the south of Ireland was new, had almost 
continually before them spectacles of abject misery, which 
robbed these things of more than half their charm. Sir Walter, 
indeed, with the habitual hopefulness of his temper, persisted 
that what he saw even in Kerry was better than what books 
had taught him to expect; and insured, therefore, that im- 
provement, however slow, was going on. But, ever and anon, 
as we moved deeper into the country, there was a melancholy 



TOUR IN IRELAND. 449 

in his countenance, and, despite himself, in the tone of his 
voice, which I for one could not mistake. The constant pass- 
ings and repassings of bands of mounted policemen, armed to 
the teeth, and having quite the air of highly disciplined sol- 
diers on sharp service ; — the rueful squalid poverty that 
crawled by every wayside, and blocked up every village where 
we had to change horses, with exhibitions of human suffering 
and degradation, such as it had never entered into our heads 
to conceive; — and, above all, the contrast between these naked 
clamorous beggars, who seemed to spring out of the ground at 
every turn like swarms of vermin, and the boundless luxury 
and merriment surrounding the thinly scattered magnates who 
condescended to inhabit their ancestral seats, would have been 
sufficient to poison those landscapes, had nature dressed them 
out in the verdure of Arcadia, and art embellished them with 
all the temples and palaces of Old Rome and Athens. It is 
painful enough even to remember such things ; but twenty 
years can have had but a trifling change in the appearance of 
a country which, so richly endowed by Providence with every 
element of wealth and happiness, could, at so advanced a period 
of European civilisation, sicken the heart of the stranger by 
such wide-spread manifestations of the wanton and reckless 
profligacy of human mismanagement, the withering curse of 
feuds and factions, and the tyrannous selfishness of absentee- 
ism ; and I fear it is not likely that any contemporary critic will 
venture to call my melancholy picture overcharged. A few 
blessed exceptions — such an aspect of ease and decency, for 
example, as we met everywhere on the vast domain of the 
Duke of Devonshire — served only to make the sad reality of 
the rule more flagrant and appalling. 

There were, however, abundance of ludicrous incidents to 
break this, gloom ; and no traveller ever tasted either the hu- 
mours or the blunders of Paddy more heartily than did Sir 
Walter. I find recorded in one letter a very merry morning at 
Limerick, where, amidst the ringing of all the bells, in honour 
of the advent, there was ushered in a brother-poet, who must 
needs pay his personal respects to the author of Marmion. He 
was a scare-crow figure — by name O'Kelly ; and he had pro- 
duced on the spur of the occasion this modest parody of Dry- 
den's famous epigram : — 

" Three poets, of three different nations born, 
The United Kingdom in this age adorn ; 
Byron of England, Scott of Scotia's blood, 
And Erin's pride — O'Kelly great and good." 
2g 



450 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Sir Walter's five shillings were at once forthcoming ; and the 
bard, in order that Miss Edgeworth might display eqnal gen- 
erosity, pointed out, in a little volume of his works (for which, 
moreover, we had all to subscribe), this pregnant couplet — ■ 

"Scott, Morgan, Edgeworth, Byron, prop of Greece, 
Are characters whose fame not soon will cease." 

We were still more amused (though there was real misery in 
the case) with what befell on our approach to a certain pretty 
seat, in a different county, where there was a collection of pict- 
ures and curiosities not usually shewn to travellers. A gen- 
tleman, whom we had met in Dublin, had been accompanying 
us part of the day's journey, and volunteered, being acquainted 
with the owner, to procure us easy admission. At the entrance 
of the domain, to which we proceeded under his wing, we were 
startled by the dolorous apparition of two undertaker's men, in 
voluminous black scarfs, though there was little or nothing of 
black about the rest of their habiliments, who sat upon the 
highway before the gate, with a whisky-bottle on a deal-table 
between them. They informed us that the master of the house 
had died the day before, and that they were to keep watch and 
ward in this style until the funeral, inviting all Christian pas- 
sengers to drink a glass to his repose. Our cicerone left his 
card for the widow — having previously, no doubt, written on 
it the names of his two lions. Shortly after we regained our 
post-house, he received a polite answer from the lady. To the 
best of my memory it was in these terms: — "Mrs. pre- 
sents her kind compliments to Mr. , and much regrets that 

she cannot shew the pictures to-day, as Major died yester- 
day evening by apoplexy; which Mrs. the more regrets, as 

it will prevent her having the honour to see Sir Walter Scott 
and Miss Edgeworth." Sir Walter said it reminded him of a 
woman in Fife, who, summing up the misfortunes of a black 
year in her history, said — " Let me see, sirs ; first we lost our 
wee callant — and then Jenny — and then the gudeman himsel 
died — and then the coo died too, poor hizzey ; but, to be sure, 
her hide brought me fifteen shillings." 

At one county gentleman's table where we dined, though two 
grand full-length daubs of William and Mary adorned the walls 
of the room, there was a mixed company — about as many Cath- 
olics as Protestants, all apparently on cordial terms, and pledging 
each other lustily in bumpers of capital claret. About an hour 
after dinner, however, punch was called for; tumblers and jugs 



TOUR IN IRELAND. 451 

of hot water appeared, and with them two magnums of whisky 
— the one bearing on its label King's, the other Queen's. We 
did not at first understand these inscriptions ; but it was ex- 
plained, sotto voce, that the King's had paid the duty, the 
Queen's was of contraband origin ; and, in the choice of liquors, 
we detected a new shibboleth of party. The jolly Protes- 
tants to a man stuck to the King's bottle — the equally radiant 
Papists paid their duty to the Queen's. 

Since I have alluded at all to the then grand dispute, I may 
mention, that, after our tour was concluded, we considered with 
some wonder that, having partaken liberally of Catholic hospi- 
tality, and encountered almost every other class of society, we 
had not sat at meat with one specimen of the Romish, priest- 
hood ; whereas, even at Popish tables, we had met dignitaries 
of the Established Church. This circumstance we sat down at 
the time as amounting pretty nearly to a proof that there were 
few gentlemen in that order ; but we afterwards were willing 
to suspect that a prejudice of their own had been the source of 
it. The only incivility, which Sir Walter Scott ultimately dis- 
covered himself to have encountered — (for his friends did not 
allow him to hear of it at the time) — in the course of his Irish 
peregrination, was the refusal of a Roman Catholic gentleman, 
named O'Connell, who kept stag-hounds near Killarney, to allow 
of a hunt on the upper lake, the day he visited that beautiful 
scenery. This he did, as we were told, because he considered 
it as a notorious fact, that Sir Walter Scott was an enemy to 
the Roman Catholic claims for admission to seats in Parlia- 
ment. He was entirely mistaken, however; for, though no 
man disapproved of Romanism as a system of faith and prac- 
tice more sincerely than Sir Walter always did, he had long 
before this period formed the opinion, that no good could come 
of farther resistance to the claim in question. He on all occa- 
sions expressed manfully his belief, that the best thing for Ire- 
land would have been never to relax the strictly political enact- 
ments of the penal laws, however harsh these might appear. 
Had they been kept in vigour for another half century, it was 
his conviction that Popery would have been all but extinguished 
in Ireland. But he thought that, after admitting Romanists to 
the elective franchise, it was a vain notion that they could be 
permanently or advantageously debarred from using that fran- 
chise in favour of those of their own persuasion. The greater 
part of the charming society into which he fell while in Ireland, 
entertained views and sentiments very likely to confirm these 
impressions ; and it struck me that considerable pains were 



452 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

taken to enforce them. It was felt, probably, that the crisis of 
decision drew near ; and there might be a natural anxiety to 
secure the suffrage of the great writer of the time. 

Having crossed the hills from Killarney to Cork, where a 
repetition of the Dublin reception — corporation honours, depu- 
tations of the literary and scientific societies, and so forth — 
awaited him, he gave a couple of days to the hospitality of 
this flourishing town, and the beautiful scenery of the Lee; 
not forgetting an excursion to the groves of Blarney, among 
whose shades we had a right mirthful picnic. Sir Walter 
scrambled up to the top of the castle, and kissed, with due faith 
and devotion, the famous Blarney stone, one salute of which is 
said to emancipate the pilgrim from all future visitations of 
mauvaise lionte : 

" The stone this is, whoever kisses, 

He never misses to grow eloquent — 
'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber, 
Or be a member of Parliament." 

Prom Cork we proceeded to Dublin by Fermoy, Lismore, 
Cashel, Kilkenny, and Holycross — at all of which places we 
were bountifully entertained, and assiduously ciceroned — to 
our old quarters in St. Stephen's Green ; and after a morning 
or two spent in taking leave of many kind faces that he was 
never to see again, Sir Walter and his original fellow-travellers 
started for Holyhead on the 18th of August. Our progress 
through North Wales produced nothing worth recording, except 
perhaps the feeling of delight which everything in the aspect 
of the common people, their dress, their houses, their gardens, 
and their husbandry, could not fail to call up in persons who 
had just been seeing Ireland for the first time. Scott had, 
while at Edgeworthstown, been requested by Mr. Canning to 
meet him at his friend Mr. Bolton's, on Windermere. On 
reaching that lake, we spent a pleasant day with Professor 
Wilson at Elleray, and he then conducted us to Storrs. A 
large company had been assembled there in honour of the Min- 
ister — among others was Mr. Wordsworth. It has not, I sup- . 
pose, often happened, to a plain English merchant, wholly the 
architect of his own fortunes, to entertain at one time a party 
embracing so many illustrious names. He was proud of his 
guests ; they respected him, and honoured and loved each other ; 
and it would have been difficult to say which star in the con- 
stellation shone with the brightest or the softest light. There 
was "high discourse," intermingled with as gay flashings of 



VISIT TO WINDERMERE. 453 

courtly wit as ever Canning displayed ; and a plentiful allow- 
ance, on all sides, of those airy transient pleasantries, in which 
the fancy of poets, however wise and grave, delights to run 
riot when they are sure not to be misunderstood. There were 
beautiful and accomplished women to adorn and enjoy this 
circle. The weather was as Elysian as the scenery. There 
were brilliant cavalcades through the woods in the mornings, 
and delicious boatings on the Lake by moonlight ; and the last 
day, " the Admiral of the Lake " presided over one of the most 
splendid regattas that ever enlivened Windermere. Perhaps 
there were not fewer than fifty barges following in the Profes- 
sor's radiant procession, when it paused at the point of Storrs 
to admit into the place of honour the vessel that carried kind 
and happy Mr. Bolton and his guests. The bards of the Lakes 
led the cheers that hailed Scott and Canning ; and music and 
sunshine, flags, streamers, and gay dresses, the merry hum 
of voices, and the rapid splashing of innumerable oars, made 
up a dazzling mixture of sensations as the flotilla wound its 
way among the richly-foliaged islands, and along bays and 
promontories peopled with enthusiastic spectators. 

On at last quitting Storrs, we visited Mr. Wordsworth at his 
charming retreat of Mount Rydal : and he thence accompanied 
us to Keswick, where we saw Mr. Southey in his unrivalled 
library. Mr. Wordsworth and his daughter then turned with 
us, and passing over Kirkstone to Ulswater, conducted us first 
to his friend Mr. Marshall's elegant villa, near Lyulph's Tower, 
and on the next day to the noble castle of his lifelong friend 
and patron Lord Lonsdale. The Earl and Countess had their 
halls filled with another splendid circle of distinguished persons. 
Sir Walter remained a couple of days, and perambulated, under 
Wordsworth's guidance, the superb terraces and groves of the 
" fair domain " which that poet has connected with the noblest 
monument of his genius. He reached Abbotsford again on 
the 1st of September, and said truly that " his tour had been 
one ovation." 

Without an hour's delay he resumed his usual habits of life 
— the musing ramble among his own glens, the breezy ride 
over the moors, the merry spell at the woodman's axe, or the 
festive chase of Newark, Fernilee, Hangingshaw, or Deloraine ; 
the quiet old-fashioned contentment of the little domestic circle, 
alternating with the brilliant phantasmagoria of admiring, and 
sometimes admired, strangers — or the hoisting of the telegraph 
flag that called laird and bonnet-laird to the burning of the 



454 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

water, or the wassail of the hall. The hours of the closet alone 
had found a change. The preparation for the Life of Napoleon 
was a course of such hard reading as had not been called for 
while "the great magician," in the full sunshine of ease, 
amused himself, and delighted the world, by unrolling, fold 
after fold, his endlessly varied panorama of romance. That 
miracle had to all appearance cost him no effort. Unmoved 
and serene among the multiplicities of worldly business, and 
the invasions of half Europe and America, he had gone on 
tranquilly enjoying, rather than exerting his genius, in the 
production of those masterpieces which have peopled all our 
firesides with inexpensive friends, and rendered the solitary 
supremacy of Shakspeare, as an all-comprehensive and genial 
painter of man, no longer a proverb. 

He had, while this was the occupation of his few desk-hours, 
read only for his diversion. How much he read even then, his 
correspondence may have afforded some notion. Those who 
observed him the most constantly, were never able to under- 
stand how he contrived to keep himself so thoroughly up with 
the stream of contemporary literature of almost all sorts, 
French and German, as well as English. That a rapid glance 
might tell him more than another man could gather by a 
week's poring, may easily be guessed; but the grand secret 
was his perpetual practice of his own grand maxim, never to be 
doing nothing. He had no "unconsidered trifles" of time. 
Every moment was turned to account ; and thus he had leisure 
for everything — except, indeed, the newspapers, which con- 
sume so many precious hours now-a-days with most men, and 
of which, during the period of my acquaintance with him, he 
certainly read less than any other man I ever knew that had 
any habit of reading at all. I should also except, speaking 
generally, the Reviews and Magazines of the time. Of these 
he saw few, and of the few he read little. 

He had now to apply himself doggedly to the mastering of 
a huge accumulation of historical materials. He read, and 
noted, and indexed with the pertinacity of some pale compiler 
in the British Museum ; but rose from such employment, not 
radiant and buoyant, as after he had been feasting himself 
among the teeming harvests of Fancy, but with an aching 
brow, and eyes on which the dimness of years had begun to 
plant some specks, before they were subjected again to that 
straining over small print and difficult manuscript which had, 
no doubt, been familiar to them in the early time, when (in 
Shortrede's phrase) " he was making himself." It was a 



MOORE AT ABBOTSFORB. 455 

pleasant sight when one happened to take a passing peep into 
his den, to see the white head erect, and the smile of conscious 
inspiration on his lips, while the pen, held boldly, and at a 
commanding distance, glanced steadily and gaily along a fast- 
blackening page of The Talisman. It now often made me 
sorry to catch a glimpse of him, stooping and poring with his 
spectacles, amidst piles of authorities — a little note-book ready 
in the left hand, that had always used to be at liberty for pat- 
ting Maida. 

About this time, being again a traveller, I lost the opportu- 
nity of witnessing his reception of several eminent persons; 
— among others the late admirable Master of the Eolls, Lord 
Gifford, and his Lady — Dr. Philpotts, now Bishop of Exeter ; 
and Mr. Thomas Moore. This last fortunately found Sir 
Walter in an interval of repose — no one with him at Abbots- 
ford but Lady and Miss Scott — and no company at dinner 
except the Fergussons and Laidlaw. The two poets had thus 
the opportunity of a great deal of quiet conversation; and 
from the hour they met, they seem to have treated each 
other with a full confidence, the record of which, however 
touchingly honourable to both, could hardly be made public 
in extenso while one of them survives. The first day they 
were alone after dinner, and the talk turned chiefly on the 
recent death of Byron — from which Scott passed unaffectedly 
to his own literary history. Mr. Moore listened with great 
interest to details, now no longer new, about the early days of 
Mat Lewis, the Minstrelsy, and the Poems; and "at last," 
says he, "to my no small surprise, as well as pleasure, he 
mentioned the novels, without any reserve, as his own. He 
gave me an account of the original progress of those extraor- 
dinary works, the hints supplied for them, the conjectures 
and mystification to which they had given rise, &c. &c. ; " he 
concluded with saying, " they have been a mine of wealth to 
me — but I find I fail in them now — I can no longer make 
them so good as at first." This frankness was met as it 
should have been by the brother poet ; and when he entered 
Scott's room next morning, "he laid his hand," says Mr. 
Moore, " with a sort of cordial earnestness on my breast, and 
said — Now, my dear Moore, we are friends for life." They 
sallied out for a walk through the plantations, and among 
other things, the commonness of the poetic talent in these 
days* was alluded to. " Hardly a Magazine is now published," 
said Moore, "that does not contain verses which some thirty 
years ago would have made a reputation." — Scott turned with 



456 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

his look of shrewd humour, as if chuckling over his own suc- 
cess, and said, " Ecod, we were in the luck of it to come before 
these felloAvs ; " but he added, playfully flourishing his stick 
as he spoke, "we have, like Bobadil, taught them to beat us 
with our own weapons." — " In complete novelty," says Moore, 
"he seemed to think, lay the only chance for a man ambitious 
of high literary reputation in these days." 

Moore says — "I parted from Scott with the feeling that all 
the world might admire him in his works, but that those only 
could learn to love him as he deserved who had seen him at 
Abbotsford. I give you carte blanche, to say what you please 
of my sense of his cordial kindness and gentleness ; perhaps 
a not very dignified phrase would express my feeling better 
than any line one — it was that he was a thorough good fellow" 
What Scott thought of his guest appears from this entry in 
a private note-book : — " Tom Moore's is the most exquisite 
warbling I ever heard. . . . There is a manly frankness, with 
perfect ease and good-breeding, about him, which is delightful. 
Not the least touch of the poet or the pedant. A little — 
very little man — less, I think, than Lewis, and something 
like him in person ; God knows, not in conversation, for Mat, 
though a clever fellow, was a bore of the first description. 
Moreover, he looked always like a schoolboy. Now Moore 
has none of this insignificance. His countenance is plain, but 
the expression so very animated, especially in speaking or 
singing, that it is far more interesting than the finest features 
could have rendered it. I was aware that Byron had often 
spoken of Moore and myself in the same breath, and with the 
same sort of regard ; so I was curious to see what there could 
be in common betwixt us, Moore having lived so much in the 
*gay world, I in the country, and with people of business, and 
sometimes with politicians ; Moore a scholar, I none ; he a 
musician and artist, I without knowledge of a note ; he a demo- 
crat, I an aristocrat — with many other points of difference; 
besides his being an Irishman, I a Scotchman, and both toler- 
ably national. Yet there is a point of resemblance, and a 
strong one. We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather 
seek to enjoy what is going forward than to maintain our 
dignity as Lions ; and we have both seen the world too widely 
and too well not to contemn in our souls the imaginary conse- 
quence of literary people, who walk with their noses in the 
air, and remind me always of the fellow whom Johnson met 
in an alehouse, and who called himself ' the great Twalmly — 
inventor of the flood-gate iron for smoothing linen.'' He also 
enjoys the mot pour rire, and so do I." 



MBS. COUTTS AT ABBOTSFOBD. 457 

The author of Lalla Eookh's Kelso chaise "was followed 
before many days by a more formidable equipage. The much- 
talked-of lady who began life as Miss Harriet Mellon, a comic 
actress in a provincial troop, and died Duchess of St. Albans, 
was then making a tour in Scotland as Mrs. Coutts, the enor- 
mously wealthy widow of the first English banker of his time. 
No person of such consequence could, in those days, have 
thought a Scotch progress complete, unless it included a re- 
ception at Abbotsford ; but Mrs. Coutts had been previously 
acquainted with Sir Walter, who indeed had some remote 
connexion with her late husband's family, through the Stuarts 
of Allanbank. He had visited her occasionally in London 
during Mr. Coutts' s life, and was very willing to do the hon- 
ours of Teviotdale in return. But although she was consider- 
ate enough not to come on him with all her retinue (leaving 
four of the seven carriages with which she travelled at Edin- 
burgh), the appearance of only three coaches, each drawn by 
four horses, was rather trying for poor Lady Scott. They 
contained Mrs. Coutts — her future lord the Duke of St. Albans 
— one of his Grace's sisters — a dame cle compagnie — a brace 
of physicians — for it had been considered that one doctor 
might himself be disabled in the course of an expedition so 
adventurous — and, besides other menials of every grade, two 
bedchamber women for Mrs. Coutts's own person ; she requir- 
ing to have this article also in duplicate, because, in her 
widowed condition, she was fearful of ghosts — and there 
must be one Abigail for the service of the toilette, a second 
to keep watch by night. With a little puzzling and cramming, 
all this train found accommodation; — but it so happened that 
there were already in the house several ladies, Scotch and Eng- 
lish, of high birth and rank, who felt by no means disposed to 
assist their host and hostess in making Mrs. Coutts's visit agree- 
able to her. I need not observe how effectually women of fash- 
ion can contrive to mortify, without doing or saying anything 
that shall expose them to the charge of actual incivility. 

Sir Walter, during dinner, did everything in his power to 
counteract this influence of the evil eye, and something to over- 
awe it ; — but the spirit of mischief had been fairly stirred, 
and it was easy to see that Mrs. Coutts followed these noble 
dames to the drawing-room in by no means that complacent 
mood which was customarily sustained, doubtless, by every 
blandishment of obsequious flattery, in this mistress of mill- 
ions. He cut the gentlemen's sederunt short, and soon after 
joining the ladies, managed to withdraw the youngest, and 



458 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

gayest, and cleverest, who was also the highest in rank (the 
late Marchioness of Northampton), into his arrnorial-hall ad- 
joining. " I said to her " (he told me), " I want to speak a 
word with you about Mrs. Coutts ; — we have known each 
other a good while, and I know you won't take anything I 
can say in ill part. It is, I hear, not uncommon among the 
fine ladies in London to be very well pleased to accept invita- 
tions, and even sometimes to hunt after them, to Mrs. Coutts's 
grand balls and fetes, and then, if they meet her in any private 
circle, to practise on her the delicate manoeuvre called tipping 
the cold shoulder. This you agree with me is shabby ; but it is 
nothing new either to you or to me, that fine people will do 
shabbinesses for which beggars might blush, if they once stoop 
so low as to poke for tickets. I am sure you would not for 
the world do such a thing ; but you must permit me to take 
the great liberty of saying, that I think the style you have all 
received my guest Mrs. Coutts in, this evening, is, to a certain 
extent, a sin of the same order. You were all told a couple 
of days ago that I had accepted her visit, and that she would 
arrive to-day to stay three nights. Now if any of you had not 
been disposed to be of my party at the same time with her, 
there was plenty of time for you to have gone away before she 
came: and as none of you moved, and it was impossible to 
fancy that any of you would remain out of mere curiosity, I 
thought I had a perfect right to calculate on your having 
made up your minds to help me out with her." Lady North- 
ampton (who had been his ward) answered — "I thank you, 
Sir Walter ; — you have done me the great honour to speak as 
if I had been your daughter, and depend upon it you shall be 
obeyed with heart and good will." One by one, the other ex- 
clusives were seen engaged in a little tete-a-tete with her lady- 
ship. Sir Walter was soon satisfied that things had been put 
into a right train; the Marchioness was requested to sing a 
particular song, because he thought it would please Mrs. Coutts. 
" Nothing could gratify her more than to please Mrs. Coutts." 
Mrs. Coutts's brow smoothed, and in the course of half-an- 
hour she was as happy and easy as ever she was in her life, 
rattling away at comical anecdotes of her early theatrical years, 
and joining in the chorus of Sir Adam's Laird of Cockpen. 
She stayed out her three days 1 — saw, accompanied by all the 
circle, Melrose, Dry burgh, and Yarrow — and left Abbotsf ord 

1 Sir Walter often quoted the maxim of an old lady in one of Miss 
Terrier's novels — that a visit should never exceed three days, "the rest 
day — the drest day — and the prest day." 



MRS. COUTTS AT ABBOTSFOBD. 459 

delighted with her host, and, to all appearance, with his other 
guests. 

It may be said (for the most benevolent of men had in his 
lifetime, and still has, some maligners) that he was so anxious 
about Mrs. Coutts's comfort, because he worshipped wealth. I 
dare not deny that he set more of his affections, during great 
part of his life, upon worldly things, wealth among others, 
than might have become such an intellect. One may conceive 
a sober grandeur of mind, not incompatible with genius as rich 
as even his, but infinitely more admirable than any genius, in- 
capable of brooding upon any of the pomps and vanities of this 
life — or caring about money at all, beyond what is necessary 
for the easy sustenance of nature. But we must, in judging 
the most powerful of minds, take into account the influences 
to which they were exposed in the plastic period ; and where 
imagination is visibly the predominant faculty, allowance must 
be made very largely indeed^ Scott's autobiographical frag- 
ment, and the anecdotes annexed to it, have been printed in 
vain, if they have not conveyed the notion of such a training 
of the mind, fancy, and character, as could hardly fail to sug- 
gest dreams and aspirations very likely, were temptation pre- 
sented, to take the shape of active external ambition — to 
prompt a keen pursuit of those resources, without which vis- 
ions of worldly splendour cannot be realised. But I think 
the subsequent narrative and his own correspondence must 
also have satisfied every candid reader that his appetite for 
wealth was after all essentially a vivid yearning for the means 
of large beneficence. As to his being capable of the silliness 
— to say nothing of the meanness — of allowing any part of his 
feelings or demeanour towards others to be affected by their 
mere possession of wealth, I cannot consider such a suggestion 
as worthy of much remark. He had a kindness towards Mrs. 
Coutts, because he knew that, vain and pompous as her dis- 
plays of equipage and attendance might be, she mainly valued 
Avealth, like himself, as the instrument of doing good. Even 
of her apparently most fantastic indulgences he remembered, 
as Pope did when ridiculing the " lavish cost and little skill " 
of his Timon, 

" Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed ; " 

but he interfered, to prevent her being made uncomfortable in 
his house, neither more nor less than he would have done, had 
she come there in her original character of a comic actress, and 



460 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

been treated with coldness as sncli by his Marchionesses and 
Countesses. 

Since I have been led to touch on what many always con- 
sidered as the weak part of his character — his over respect for 
worldly things in general, — I must say one word as to the 
matter of rank, which undoubtedly had far more effect on him 
than money. In the first place, he was all along courted by 
the great World — not it by him ; and, secondly, pleased as he 
was with its attentions, he derived infinitely greater pleasure 
from the trusting and hearty affection of his old equals, and 
the inferiors whose welfare he so unweariedly promoted. But, 
thirdly, he made acute discriminations among the many differ- 
ent orders of claimants who jostle each other for pre-eminence 
in the curiously complicated system of modern British society. 
His imagination had been constantly exercised in recalling and 
embellishing whatever features of the past it was possible to 
connect with any pleasing ideas, and a historical name was a 
charm that literally stirred his blood. But not so a mere title. 
He reverenced the Duke of Buccleuch — but it was not as a 
Duke, but as the head of his clan, the representative of the old 
knights of Branxholm. In the Duke of Hamilton he saw not 
the premier peer of Scotland, but the lineal heir of the heroic 
old Douglasses ; and he had profounder respect for the chief 
of a Highland Clan, without any title whatever, and with an 
ill-paid rental of two or three thousand a year, than for the 
haughtiest magnate in a blue ribbon, whose name did not call 
up any grand historical reminiscence. I remember once when 
he had some young Englishmen of high fashion in his house, 
there arrived a Scotch gentleman of no distinguished appear- 
ance, whom he received with a sort of eagerness and empresse- 
ment of reverential courtesy that struck the strangers as quite 
out of common. His name was that of a Scotch Earl, however, 
and no doubt he was that nobleman's son. "Well," said one 
of the Southrons to me, — "I had never heard that the Earl 

of was one of your very greatest lords in this country ; 

even a second son of his, booby though he be, seems to be of 
wonderful consideration"." The young English lord heard with 
some surprise, that the visitor in question was a poor lieutenant 
on half-pay, heir to a tower about as crazy as Don Quixote's, 
and noways related (at least according to English notions of 

relationship) to the Earl of . "What, then," he cried, 

" what can Sir Walter mean ? " " Why," said I, " his meaning 
is very clear. This gentleman is the male representative (which 
the Earl of may possibly be in the female line) of a knight 



REGARDING RANK. 461 

who is celebrated by our old poet Blind Harry, as having sig- 
nalised himself by the side of Sir William Wallace, and from 

whom every Scotchman that bears the name of has at 

least the ambition of being supposed to descend." — Sir Wal- 
ter's own title came unsought; and that he accepted it, not in 
the foolish fancy that such a title, or any title, could increase 
his own personal consequence, but because he thought it fair 
to embrace the opportunity of securing a certain external dis- 
tinction to his heirs at Abbotsford, was proved pretty clearly 
by his subsequently declining the greatly higher, but intrans- 
missible rank of a Privy-Councillor. At the same time, I dare- 
say his ear liked the knightly sound ; and undoubtedly he was 
much pleased with the pleasure his wife took, and gaily ac- 
knowledged she took, in being My Lady. 

The circumstances of the King's visit in 1822, and others 
already noted, leave no doubt that imagination enlarged and 
glorified for him many objects to which it is very difficult for 
ordinary men in our generation to attach much importance; 
and perhaps he was more apt to attach importance to such 
things, during the prosperous course of his own fortunes, than 
even a liberal consideration of circumstances can altogether ex- 
cuse. To myself it seems to have been so ; yet I do not think 
the severe critics on this part of his story have kept quite suffi- 
ciently in mind how easy it is for us all to undervalue any 
species of temptation to which we have not happened to be 
exposed. I am aware, too, that there are examples of men of 
genius, situated to a certain extent like him, who have resisted 
and repelled the fascinations against which he was not entirely 
proof ; but I have sometimes thought that they did so at the 
expense of parts of their character nearer the marrow of hu- 
manity than those which his weakness in this way tended to 
endamage ; that they mingled, in short, in their virtuous self- 
denial, some grains of sacrifice at the shrine of a cold, unsocial, 
even sulky species of self-conceit. But this digression has 
already turned out much longer than I intended. It is time 
to open occurrences which contrast sadly with • the summer 
scenes of 1825. 

Towards the end of September I returned to Scotland from 
a visit to London on some personal business. During that visit 
I had heard a great deal more than I understood about the 
commercial excitement of the time. There had been several 
years of extravagant speculation. Even persons who had ex- 
tensive and flourishing businesses in their hands, partook the 
general rage of infatuation. He whose own shop, counting- 



462 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

house, or warehouse, had been sufficient to raise him to a decent 
and safely increasing opulence, and was more than sufficient to 
occupy all his attention, drank in the vain delusion that he was 
wasting his time and energy on things unworthy of a masculine 
ambition, and embarked the resources necessary for the pur- 
poses of his lawful calling, in schemes worthy of the land-sur- 
veyors of El Dorado. It was whispered that the trade (so called, 
par excellence) had been bitten with this fever ; and persons of 
any foresight who knew the infinitely curious links by which 
booksellers, and printers, and paper-makers (and therefore 
authors) are bound together, for good and for evil, already 
began to prophesy that, whenever the general crash, which must 
come erelong, should arrive, its effects would be felt far and 
wide among all classes connected with the productions of the 
press. When it was rumoured that this great bookseller, or 
printer, had become a principal holder of South American min- 
ing shares — that another was the leading director of a gas 
company — while a third house had risked about L.100,000 in 
a cast upon the most capricious of all agricultural products, hops 

— it was no wonder that bankers should begin to calculate bal- 
ances, and pause upon discounts. 

Among other hints were some concerning a bookselling 
establishment in London, with which I knew Constable to be 
closely connected. Little suspecting the extent to which any 
mischance of Messrs. Hurst and Robinson must involve Sir 
Walter's own responsibilities, I transmitted to him the rumours 
in question. Before I could have his answer, a legal friend 
told me that people were talking doubtfully about Constable's 
own stability. I thought it probable, that if Constable fell 
into any embarrassments, Scott might suffer the inconvenience 
of losing the copy-money of his last novel. Nothing more serious 
occurred to me. But I thought it my duty to tell him this 
whisper also ; and heard from him, almost by return of post, 
that, shake who might in London, his friend in Edinburgh was 
" rooted, as well as branched, like the oak." 

A few days, however, after my arrival at Chiefswood, I 
received a letter from the legal friend already alluded to — 
(Mr. William Wright, the eminent barrister of Lincoln's Inn, 

— who, by the way, was also on habits of great personal famil- 
iarity with Constable, and liked the Czar exceedingly) — which 
renewed my apprehensions, or rather, for the first time, gave 
me any suspicion that there really might be something " rotten 
in the state of Muscovy" Mr. Wright informed me that it was 
reported in London that Constable's London banker had thrown 



RUMOURS OF EVIL. 463 

up his book. This letter reaching me about five o'clock, I rode 
over to Abbotsford, and found Sir Walter alone over his glass 
of whisky and water and cigar — at this time, whenever there 
was no company, "his custom always in the afternoon." I 
gave him Mr. Wright's letter to read. He did so, and return- 
ing it, said, quite with his usual tranquil good-humour of look 
and voice, " I am much obliged to you for coming over ; but 
you may rely upon it Wright has been hoaxed. I promise you, 
were the Crafty's book thrown up, there would be a pretty de- 
cent scramble among the bankers for the keeping of it. There 
may have been some little dispute or misunderstanding, which 
malice and envy have exaggerated in this absurd style ; but I 
shan't allow such nonsense to disturb my siesta." 

Seeing how coolly he treated my news, I went home relieved 
and gratified. Next morning, as I was rising, behold Peter 
Mathieson at my door, his horses evidently off a journey, and 
the Sheriff rubbing his eyes as if the halt had shaken him out 
of a sound sleep. I made what haste I could to descend, and 
found him by the side of the brook looking somewhat worn, but 
with a serene and satisfied countenance, busied already in help- 
ing his little grandson to feed a fleet of ducklings. — " You are 
surprised," he said, " to see me here. The truth is, I was more 
taken aback with Wright's epistle than I cared to let on; and 
so, as soon as you left me, I ordered the carriage to the door, 
and never stopped till I got to Polton, where I found Constable 
putting on his nightcap. I stayed an hour with him, and I have 
now the pleasure to tell you that all is right. There was not a 
word of truth in the story — he is fast as Ben Lomond ; and as 
Mamma and Anne did not know what my errand was, I thought 
it as well to come and breakfast here, and set Sophia and you 
at your ease before I went home again." 

We had a merry breakfast, and he chatted gaily afterwards 
as I escorted him through his woods, leaning on my shoulder 
all the way, which he seldom as yet did, except with Tom 
Purdie, unless when he was in a more than commonly happy and 
affectionate mood. But I confess the impression this incident 
left on my mind was not a pleasant one. It was then that I 
first began to harbour a suspicion, that if anything should befall 
Constable, Sir Walter would suffer a heavier loss than the non- 
payment of some one novel. The night journey revealed serious 
alarm. My Avife suggested, as we talked things over, that his 
alarm had been, not on his own account, but Ballantyne's, who, 
in case evil came on the great employer of his types, might 
possibly lose a year's profit on them, which neither she nor 



464 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

I doubted must amount to a large sum — any more than that a 
misfortune of Ballantyne's would grieve her father as much as 
one personal to himself. His warm regard for his printer 
could be no secret ; we well knew that* James was his confiden- 
tial critic — his trusted and trustworthy friend from boyhood. 
Nor was I ignorant that Scott had a share in the property of 
Ballantyne's Edinburgh Weekly Journal. That had been com- 
monly reported before I was acquainted with them ; and all 
doubt was removed at the time of the Queen's trial in 1820, 
when they had some warm debates in my presence as to the 
side to be taken on that unhappy question. But that Sir 
Walter was, and had all along been James's partner in the 
great printing concern, neither I, nor, I believe, any member 
of his family, had entertained the slightest suspicion prior to 
the coming calamities which were now " casting their shadows 
before." 

It is proper to add here, that the story about the banker's 
throwing up Constable's book was groundless. Sir Walter's 
first guess as to its origin proved correct. 

A few days afterwards, Mr. Murray sent me a transcript of 
Lord Byron's Ravenna Diary, with permission for my neighbour 
also to read it if he pleased. Sir Walter read those extraordinary 
pages with the liveliest interest, and filled several of the blank 
leaves and margins with illustrative annotations and anecdotes. 
In perusing what Byron had jotted down from day to day in 
the intervals of regular composition, it very naturally occurred 
to him that the noble poet had done well to avoid troubling 
himself by any adoption or affectation of plan or order — giv- 
ing an opinion, a reflexion, a reminiscence, serious or comic, 
or the incidents of the passing hour, just as the spirit moved 
him; — and seeing what a mass of curious things, such as 
" after times would not willingly let die," had been thus res- 
cued from oblivion at a very slight cost of exertion, — he 
resolved to attempt keeping thenceforth a somewhat similar 
record. A thick quarto volume, bound in vellum, with a lock 
and key, was forthwith procured. The occupation of a few 
stray minutes in his dressing-room at getting up in the morn- 
ing, or after he had retired for the night, was found a pleasant 
variety for him. He also kept the book by him when in his 
study, and often had recourse to it when anything puzzled him 
and called for a halt in the prosecution of what he considered 
(though posterity will hardly do so) a more important task. It 
was extremely fortunate that he took up this scheme exactly 
at the time when he settled seriously to the history of Buona- 



LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 465 

parte's personal career. The sort of preparation which every 
chapter of that book now called for has been already alluded 
to ; and — although, when he had fairly read himself up to any 
one great cycle of transactions, his old spirit roused itself in 
full energy, and he traced the record with as rapid and glowing 
a pencil as he had ever wielded — there were minutes enough, 
and hours, — possibly days of weariness, depression, and languor, 
when (unless this silent confidant had been at hand) even he 
perhaps might have made no use of his writing-desk. 

Even the new resource of journalising, however, was not 
sufficient. He soon convinced himself that it would facili- 
tate, not impede, his progress with Napoleon, to have a work 
of imagination in hand also. The success of the Tales of the 
Crusaders had been very high; and Constable, well aware that 
it had been his custom of old to carry on two romances at the 
same time, was now too happy to encourage him in beginning 
Woodstock, to be taken up whenever the historical MS. should 
be in advance of the press. 

Thenceforth, as the Diary shews, he continued to divide his 
usual desk-hours accordingly : but before he had filled many 
pages of the private Quarto, it begins to record alarm — from 
day to day deepening — as to Constable, and the extent to 
which the great publisher's affairs had by degrees come to be 
connected and bound up with those of the printing firm. 

Till John Ballantyne's death, as already intimated, the pecu- 
niary management of that firm had been wholly in his hands. 
Of his conduct in such business I need add no more : the bur- 
den had since been on his surviving brother; and I am now 
obliged to say that, though his deficiencies were of a very dif- 
ferent sort from John's, they were, as respected his commercial 
career and connexions, great and unfortunate. 

He had received the education, not of a printer, but of a 
solicitor; and he never, to his dying day, had the remotest 
knowledge or feeling of what the most important business of 
a master-printer consists in. He had a fine taste for the effect 
of types — no establishment turned out more beautiful speci- 
mens of the art than his ; but he appears never to have under- 
stood that types need watching as well as setting. If the page 
looked handsome, he was satisfied. He had been instructed 
that on every L.50 paid in his men's wages, the master-printer 
is entitled to an equal sum of gross profit; and beyond this 
rule of thumb calculation, no experience- could bring him to 
penetrate his mystery. In a word, James never comprehended 
that in the greatest and most regularly employed manufactory 
2h 



466 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

of this kind (or indeed of any kind) the profits are likely to be 
entirely swallowed up, unless the acting master keeps up a 
most wakeful scrutiny, from week to week, and from day to 
day, as to the machinery and the materials. So far was he 
from doing this, that during several of the busiest and most 
important years of his connexion with the establishment in 
the Canongate, he seldom crossed its doors. He sat in his 
own elbow-chair, in a comfortable library, situated in a dif- 
ferent street — not certainly an idle man — quite the reverse, 
though naturally indolent — but the most negligent and ineffi- 
cient of master-printers. 

He was busy, indeed ; and inestimably serviceable to Scott 
was his labour ; but it consisted solely in the correction and 
revisal of proof-sheets. It is most true, that Sir Walter's hur- 
ried method of composition rendered it absolutely necessary 
that whatever he wrote should be subjected to far more than 
the usual amount of inspection required at the hands of a 
printer ; and it is equally so, that it would have been extremely 
difficult to find another man willing and able to bestow such 
time and care on his proof-sheets as they uniformly received 
from James. But this was, in fact, not the proper occupation 
of the man who was at the head of the establishment — who 
had undertaken the pecuniary management. In every other 
great printing-house that I have known anything about, there 
are intelligent and well-educated men, called, technically, read- 
ers, who devote themselves to this species of labour, and who 
are, I fear, seldom paid in proportion to its importance. Dr! 
Goldsmith, in his early life, was such a reader in the printing- 
house of Richardson ; but the author of Clarissa did not disdain 
to look after the presses and types himself, or he would never 
have accumulated the fortune that enabled him to be the liberal 
employer of readers like Goldsmith. In a letter addressed to 
John Ballantyne, when the bookselling house was breaking up, 
Scott says, — " One or other of you will need to be constantly 
in the printing-office henceforth; it is the sheet anchor." This 
was ten years after that establishment began. Thenceforth 
James, in compliance with this injunction, occupied, during 
many hours of every day, a cabinet within the premises in the 
Canongate ; but whoever visited him there, found him at the 
same eternal business, that of a literator, not that of a printer. 
He was either editing his newspaper — or correcting sheets, 
or writing critical notes to the Author of Waverley. Shak- 
speare, Addison, Johnson, and Burke, were at his elbow; but 
not the ledger. We may thus understand poor John's com- 



COMMERCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 467 

plaint, in what I may call his dying memorandum, of the 
" large sums abstracted from the bookselling house for the use 
of the printing-office." Yet that bookselling house was from 
the first a hopeless one ; whereas, under accurate superintend- 
ence, the other ought to have produced the partners a dividend 
of from L.2000 to L.3000 a year, at the very least. 

On the other hand, the necessity of providing some remedy 
for this radical disorder must very soon have forced itself upon 
the conviction of all concerned, had not John introduced his 
fatal enlightenment on the subject of facilitating discounts, 
and raising cash by means of accommodation-bills. Hence the 
perplexed states and calendars — the wildernesses and laby- 
rinths of ciphers, through which no eye but that of a professed 
accountant could have detected any clue ; hence the accumula- 
tion of bills and counter-bills drawn by both bookselling and 
printing house, and gradually so mixed up with other obliga- 
tions, that John died in utter ignorance of the condition of 
their affairs. The pecuniary detail then devolved upon James ; 
and I fancy it will be only too apparent that he never made 
even one serious effort to master the formidable array of figures 
thus committed to his sole trust. 

The reader has been enabled to trace from its beginnings 
the connexion between Constable and the two Ballantyne 
firms. It has been seen how much they both owed to his in- 
terference on various occasions of pressure and alarm. But 
when he, in his overweening self-sufficiency, thought it in- 
volved no mighty hazard to indulge his better feelings, as well 
as his lordly vanity, in shielding these firms from commercial 
dishonour, he had estimated but loosely the demands of the 
career of speculation on which he was himself entering. And 
by and by, when advancing by one mighty plunge after another 
in that vast field, he felt in his own person the threatenings of 
more signal ruin than could have befallen them, this "Napo- 
leon of the press " — still as of old buoyed up to the ultimate 
result of his grand operations by the most fulsome flatteries 
of imagination — appears to have tossed aside very summarily 
all scruples about the extent to which he might be entitled to 
tax their sustaining credit in requital. The Ballantynes, if 
they had comprehended all the bearings of the case, were 
not the men to consider grudgingly demands of this nature, 
founded on service so important; and who can doubt that 
Scott viewed them from a chivalrous altitude ? It is easy to 
see, that the moment the obligations became reciprocal, there 
arose extreme peril of their coming to be hopelessly compli- 



468 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

cated. It is equally clear, that Scott ought to have applied 
ou these affairs, as their complication thickened, the acumen 
winch he exerted, and rather prided himself in exerting, on 
smaller points of worldly business, to the utmost. That he 
did not, I must always regard as the enigma of his personal 
history; but various incidents in that history, which I have 
already narrated, prove incontestably that he had never done 
so ; and I am unable to account for this having been the case, 
except on the supposition that his confidence in the resources 
of Constable and the prudence of James Ballantyne was so en- 
tire, that he willingly absolved himself from all duty of active 
and thoroughgoing superinspection. 

It is the extent to which the confusion had gone that con- 
stitutes the great puzzle. I have been told that John Ballan- 
tyne, in his heyday, might be heard whistling for his clerk, 
John Stevenson (often alluded to in Scott's correspondence 
as True Jock), from the sanctum behind the shop with, " Jock, 
you lubber, fetch ben a sheaf o' stamps." Such things might 
well enough be believed of that hare-brained creature ; but how 
sober solemn James could have made up his mind, as he must 
have done, to follow much the same wild course whenever any 
pinch occurred, is to me, I must own, incompreheusible. The 
books were kept at the printing-house ; and of course Sir Wal- 
ter (who alone in fact had capital at stake) might have there 
examined them as often as he liked : but it is to me very doubt- 
ful if he ever once attempted to do so : and it is certain that 
they were never balanced during the latter years of the connex- 
ion. During several years it was almost daily my custom to 
walk home with Sir Walter from the Parliament House, calling 
at James's on our way. For the most part I used to amuse 
myself with a newspaper or proof-sheet in the outer room, 
while they were closeted in the little cabinet at the corner ; 
and merry were the tones that reached my ear while they re- 
mained in colloquy. If I were called in, it was because James, 
in his ecstacy, must have another to enjoy the dialogue that 
his friend was improvising — between Meg Dods and Captain 
MacTurk, for example, or Peter Peebles and his counsel. 

The reader may perhaps remember a page in a former chap- 
ter where I described Scott as riding with Johnny Ballantyne 
and myself round the deserted halls of the ancient family of 
Kiddell, and remarking how much it increased the wonder of 
their ruin that the late baronet had kept " day-book and ledger 
as regular as any cheese-monger in the Grassmarket" It is 
nevertheless true, that Sir Walter kept from first to last as 



COMMERCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 469 

accurate an account of his own personal expenditure as Sir John 
Riddell could have done of his extravagant outlay on agricult- 
ural experiments. I could, I believe, place before my reader 
the sum-total of sixpences that it had cost him to ride through 
turnpike-gates during a period of thirty years. This was, of 
course, an early habit mechanically adhered to : but how strange 
that the man who could persist, however mechanically, in not- 
ing down every shilling that he actually drew from his purse, 
should have allowed others to pledge his credit, year after year, 
upon sheafs of accommodation paper, without keeping any effi- 
cient watch — without knowing any one Christmas for how 
many thousands he was responsible as a printer in the Canongate. 

This is sufficiently astonishing — and had this been all, the re- 
sult must sooner or later have been sufficiently uncomfortable ; 
but it must be admitted that Scott could never have foreseen a 
step which Constable took in the frenzied excitement of his day 
of pecuniary alarm. Owing to the original habitual irregularities 
of John Ballantyne, it had been adopted as the regular plan 
between that person and Constable, that, whenever the latter 
signed a bill for the purpose of the other's raising money 
among the bankers, there should, in case of his neglecting to 
take that bill up before it fell due, be deposited a counter-bill, 
signed by Ballantyne, on which Constable might, if need were, 
raise a sum equivalent to that for which he had pledged his 
credit. I am told that this is an usual enough course of pro- 
cedure among speculative merchants ; and it may be so. But 
mark the issue. The plan went on under James's management, 
just as John had begun it. Under his management also — 
such was the incredible looseness of it — the counter-bills, 
meant only for being sent into the market in the event of the 
primary bills being threatened with dishonour — these instru- 
ments of safeguard for Constable against contingent danger 
were allowed to lie uninquired about in Constable's desk, until 
they had swelled to a truly monstrous "sheaf of stamps." 
Constable's hour of distress darkened about him, and he rushed 
with these to the money-changers. And thus it came to pass, 
that, supposing Ballantyne and Co. to have, at the day of reck- 
oning, obligations against them, in consequence of bill transac- 
tions with Constable, to the extent of L. 25,000, they were legally 
responsible for L.50,000. 

It is not my business to attempt any detailed history of the 
house of Constable. The sanguine man had, almost at the out- 
set of his career, been " lifted off his feet," in Burns's phrase, 
by the sudden and unparalleled success of the Edinburgh Be- 



470 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

view. Scott's poetry and Scott's novels followed : and had lie 
confined himself to those three great and triumphant under- 
takings, he must have died in possession of a princely fortune. 
But his " appetite grew with what it fed on," and a long series 
of less meritorious publications, pushed on, one after the other, 
in the craziest rapidity, swallowed up the gains which, how- 
ever vast, he never counted, and therefore always exaggerated 
to himself. Finally, what he had been to the Ballantynes, cer- 
tain other still more audacious "Sheafmen" had been to him. 
Hurst, Robinson, and Co. had long been his London correspond- 
ents ; and he had carried on with them the same traffic in bills 
and counter-bills that the Canongate Company did with him 
— and upon a still larger scale. They had done what he did 
not — or at least did not to any very culpable extent: they 
had carried their adventures out of the line of their own busi- 
ness. It was they, for example, that must needs be embarking 
such vast sums in a speculation on hops ! When ruin threat- 
ened them, they availed themselves of Constable's credit with- 
out stint or limit — while he, feeling darkly that the net was 
around him, struggled and splashed for relief, no matter who 
might suffer, so he escaped ! And Sir Walter Scott, sorely as 
he suffered, was too plainly conscious of the " strong tricks " 
he had allowed his own imagination to play, not to make mer- 
ciful allowance for all the apparently monstrous things that I 
have now been narrating of Constable. 

For the rest, his friends, and above all posterity, are not left 
to consider his fate without consoling reflexions. They who 
knew and loved him, must ever remember that the real nobility 
of his character could not have exhibited itself to the world at 
large, had he not been exposed in his later years to the ordeal 
of adversity. And others as well as they may feel assured, 
that had not that adversity been preceded by the perpetual 
spur of pecuniary demands, he who began life with such quick 
appetites for all its ordinary enjoyments, would never have 
devoted himself to the rearing of that gigantic monument of 
genius, labour, and power, which his works now constitute. 
The imagination which has bequeathed so much to delight 
and humanise mankind, would have developed few of its mirac- 
ulous resources, except in the embellishment of his own per- 
sonal existence. The enchanted spring might have sunk into 
earth with the rod that bade it gush, and left us no living 
waters. We cannot understand, but we may nevertheless re- 
spect even the strangest caprices of the marvellous combination 
of faculties to which our debt is so weighty. We should try 



COMMERCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 471 

to picture to ourselves what the actual intellectual life must 
have been, of the author of such a series of romances. We 
should ask ourselves whether, tilling and discharging so soberly 
and gracefully as he did the common functions of social man, 
it was not, nevertheless, impossible but that he must have 
passed most of his life in other worlds than ours ; and we 
ought hardly to think it a grievous circumstance that their 
bright visions should have left a dazzle sometimes on the eyes 
which he so gently reopened upon our prosaic realities. He 
had, on the whole, a command over the powers of his mind — 
I mean, that he could control and direct his thoughts and re- 
flexions with a readiness, firmness, and easy security of sway 
— beyond what I find it possible to trace in any other artist's 
recorded character and history; but he could not habitually 
fling them into the region of dreams throughout a long series 
of years, and yet be expected to find a corresponding satisfac- 
tion in bending them to the less agreeable considerations which 
the circumstances of any human being's practical lot in this 
world must present in abundance. The training to which he 
accustomed himself could not leave him as he was when he 
began. He must pay the penalty, as well as reap the glory 
of this life-long abstraction of reverie, this self-abandonment 
of Fairyland. 

This was for him the last year of many things ; among 
others, of Sibyl Grey and the Abbotsford Hunt. Towards the 
close of a hard ran on his neighbour Gala's ground, he advent- 
ured to leap the Catrail — that venerable relic of the days of 



"Reged wide and fair Strath-Clyde." 

He was severely bruised and shattered ; and never afterwards 
recovered the feeling of confidence, without which there can 
be no pleasure in horsemanship. He often talked of this acci- 
dent with a somewhat superstitious mournfulness. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

Ruin of the Houses of Constable and Ballantyne — Death of Lady Scott 
— Publication of Woodstock — Journey to London and Paris — Publi- 
cation of the Life of Napoleon. 1825-1827. 

James Ballaxtvxe says, in a paper dictated from liis 
deathbed : — " I need not here enlarge upon the unfortunate 
facility which, at the period of universal confidence and indul- 
gence, our and other houses received from the banks. Suffice 
it to say that all our appearances of prosperity, as well as 
those of Constable, and Hurst and Robinson, were merely 
shadows, and that from the moment the bankers exhibited 
symptoms of doubt, it might have been easy to discover what 
must be the ultimate result. During weeks, and even months, 
however, our house was kept in a state of very painful sus- 
pense. The other two, I have no doubt, saw the coming 
events more clearly. I must here say, that it was one of Sir 
Walter's weaknesses to shrink too much from looking evil in 
the face, and that lie was apt to carry a great deal too far — 
' sufficient for the day is the evil thereof/ I do not think 
it was more than three weeks before the catastrophe that he 
became fully convinced it was impending — if indeed his feel- 
ings ever reached the length of conviction at all. Thus, at the 
last, his fortitude was very severely tried indeed." 

Mr. Ballantyne had never seen Scott's Diary, and its entries 
from the 20th November 1825 (when it begins) until the 
middle of January 1826, are in perfect accordance with this 
statement. The first on the subject is in these terms : — " Here 
is matter for a May morning, but much fitter for a Novem- 
ber one. The general distress in the city has affected H. and 
E., Constable's great agents. Should they go, it is not likely 
that Constable can stand; and such an event would lead to 
great distress and perplexity on the part of J. B. and myself. 
Thank God, I have enough to pay more than 20s. in the pound, 
taking matters at the very worst. But much inconvenience 
must be the consequence. I had a lesson in 1814 which should 
have done good ; but success and abundance erased it from my 

472 



RUIN OF CONSTABLE AND BALLANTYNE. 473 

mind. But this is no time for journalising or moralising 
either. Necessity is like a sourfaced cook-maid, and I a turn- 
spit she has flogged, ere now, till he mounted his wheel. If 
Woodstock can be out by 25th January it will do much, — and 
it is possible." 

Thus he continued to labour on at his romance ; from time 
to time arrested amidst his visions by some fresh omen of 
the coining reality : but after suggesting or concurring in the 
commercial measure that seemed feasible, immediately com- 
manding his mind into oblivion of whatever must prevent his 
pursuance of the task that depended solely on himself. That 
down to the 14th of December he was far indeed from hav- 
ing brought home to himself anything like the extent of his 
danger, is clear enough from the step recorded in that day's 
entry — namely, his consenting to avail himself of the power 
he had retained of borrowing L. 10,000 on the lands of Abbots- 
ford, and advancing that sum to the struggling houses. Bal- 
lantyne hints that in his opinion both Constable and his 
London agents must have foreseen more clearly the issue of 
the struggle ; and it is certain that the only point in Constable's 
personal conduct which Scott afterwards considered himself 
entitled to condemn and resent, was connected with these last 
advances. 

My residence had been removed to London before Sir Walter 
felt, or acknowledged, serious apprehensions : nor can I on this 
occasion quote his Diary so largely as would enable the reader 
to follow from day to day the fluctuations of hope, anxiety, 
and fear. I must limit myself to a few of what seem the most 
remarkable passages of that record. On the 18th of December 
he writes thus : — "If things go badly in London, the magic 
wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his grasp. He must 
then, faith, be termed the Too-well-known. The feast of fancy 
will be over with the feeling of independence. He shall no 
longer have the delight of waking in the morning with bright 
ideas in his mind, hasten to commit them to paper, and count 
them monthly, as the means of planting such scaurs and pur- 
chasing such wastes ; replacing dreams of fiction by other pro- 
spective visions of walks by 

' Fountain heads, and pathless groves ; 
Places which pale passion loves.' 

This cannot be; but I may work substantial husbandry, i.e. 
write history, and such concerns. They will not be received 



474 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

with, the same enthusiasm ; at least, I much doubt the general 
knowledge that an author must write for his bread, at least for 
improving his pittance, degrades him and his productions in the 
public eye. He falls into the second-rate rank of estimation : 

' While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his side goad, 
The high-mettled racer's a hack on the road.' 

It is a bitter thought; but if tears start at it, let them flow. 
My heart clings to the place I have created — there is scarce 
a tree on it that does not owe its being to me. — What a life 
mine has been ! — half-educated, almost wholly neglected, or 
left to myself ; stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, 
and undervalued by most of nrv companions for a time ; get- 
ting forward, and held a bold and a clever fellow, contrary to 
the opinion of ail who thought me a mere dreamer ; broken- 
hearted for two years ; my heart handsomely pieced again — 
but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor 
four or five times ; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new 
source of wealth almost overflowing. Xow to be broken in my 
pitcli of pride, and nearly winged (unless good news should 
come :) because London chooses to be in an uproar, and in the 
tumult of bulls and bears, a poor inoffensive lion like myself 
is pushed to the wall. But what is to be the end of it ? God 
knows ; and so ends the catechism. — Nobody in the end can 
lose a penny by me — that is one comfort. Men will think 
pride has had a fall. Let them indulge their own pride in 
thinking that my fall will make them higher, or seem so at 
least. I have the satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity 
has been of advantage to many, and to hope that some at least 
will forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence 
of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. 
Sad hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford. 
I have half resolved never to see the place again. How could 
I tread my hall with such a diminished crest ? — how live a poor 
indebted man where I was once the wealthy, the honoured ? 
I was to have gone there on Saturday in joy and prosperity to 
receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is 
foolish — but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creat- 
ures have moved me more than any of the painful reflexions I 
have put down. Poor things ! I must get them kind masters ! 
There may be yet those who, loving me, may love my dog be- 
cause it has been mine. I must end these gloomy forebodings, 
or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men should meet 



RUIN OF CONSTABLE AND BALLANTYNE. 475 

distress. I feel my dogs' feet on my knees — I hear them 
whining and seeking me everywhere. This is nonsense, but 
it is what they would do could they know how things may be. 
— An odd thought strikes me — When I die, will the journal 
of these days be taken out of the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, 
and read with wonder, that the well-seeming Baronet should 
ever have experienced the risk of such a hitch ? — or will it 
be found in some obscure lodging-house, where the decayed 
son of chivalry had hung up his scutcheon, and where one or 
two old friends will look grave, and whisper to each other, 
' Poor gentleman ' — ' a well-meaning man ' — ' nobody's enemy 
but his own' — 'thought his parts would never wear out' — 
'family poorly left' — 'pity he took that foolish title.' Who 
can answer this question ? — Poor Will Laidlaw ! — Poor Tom 
Purdie ! — such news will wring your hearts, and many a poor 
fellow's besides, to whom my prosperity was daily bread. 

"Ballantyne behaves like himself, and sinks the prospect 
of his own ruin in contemplating mine. I tried to enrich him 
indeed, and now all — all is in the balance. He will have the 
Journal still, that is a comfort, for sure they cannot find a 
better editor. They — alas, who will they be — the unbekannten 
obern * who may have to dispose of my all as they will ? Some 
hard-eyed banker — some of these men of millions ! — I have 
endeavoured to give vent to thoughts naturally so painful, by 
writing these notes — partly to keep them at bay by busying 
myself with the history of the French Convention. I thank 
God I can do both with reasonable composure. I wonder how 
Anne will bear such an affliction. She is passionate, but stout- 
hearted and courageous in important matters, though irritable 
in trifles. I am glad Lockhart and his wife are gone. Why ? 
I cannot tell — but I am pleased to be left to my own regrets, 
without being melted by condolences, though of the most 
sincere and affectionate kind. — Half-past eight. I closed this 
book under the impression of impending ruin. I open it an 
hour after (thanks be to God) with the strong hope that matters 
will be got over safely and honourably, in a mercantile sense. 
Cadell came at eight to communicate a letter from Hurst and 
Robinson, intimating they had stood the storm. I shall always 
think the better of Cadell for this — not merely because ' his 
feet are beautiful on the mountains who brings good tidings,' 
but because he shewed feeling — deep feeling, poor fellow. 
He, who I thought had no more than his numeration-table, 
and who, if he had had his whole counting-house full of sensi- 

1 Unbekannten obern — unknown rulers. 



476 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

bility, had yet his wife and children to bestow it upon — I will 
not forget this, if all keeps right. I love the virtues of rough- 
and-round men — the others are apt to escape in salt rheurn, 
sal-volatile, and a white pocket handkerchief. 

"December 19. — Ballantyne here before breakfast. He 
looks on last night's news with confidence. Constable came 
in and sat an hour. The old gentleman is firm as a rock. 
He talks of going to London next week. But I must go to 
work. 

" December 21. — Dined with James Ballantyne, and met 
R. Cadell, and my old friend Mathews the comedian. The 
last time I saw him before, he dined with me in company with 
poor Sir Alexander Boswell, who was killed within a week. 
I never saw Sir A. more. The time before was in 1815, when 
Gala and I were returning from France, and passed through 
London, when we brought Mathews down as far as Leaming- 
ton. Poor Byron made an early dinner with us at Long's, and 
a most brilliant day we had of it. I never saw Byron so full 
of fun, frolic, wit, and whim ; he was as playful as a kitten. 
Well, I never saw him again. So this man of mirth, with his 
merry meetings, has brought me no luck. I could not help 
thinking, in the midst of the glee, what gloom had lately 
been over the minds of three of the company. What a 
strange scene if the surge of conversation could suddenly 
ebb like the tide, and show us the state of people's real 
minds ! 

' No eyes the rocks discover 
Which lurk beneath the deep.' 

Life could not be endured were it seen in reality. Things 
keep mending in London. 

" December 22. — I wrote six of my close pages yesterday, 
which is about twenty-four pages in print. What is more 
I think it comes off twangingly. The air of Bonnie Dundee 
running in my head to-day, I wrote a few verses to it before 
dinner, taking the key-note from the story of Clavers leaving 
the Scottish Convention of Estates in 1688-9. I wonder if 
they are good. Ah, poor Will Erskine ! thou couldst and 
wouldst have told me. I must consult J. B., who is as honest 
as was W. E. But then, though he has good taste too, there 
is a little of Big boiv-woiv about it. Can't say what made me 
take a frisk so uncommon of late years as to write verses of 
free-will. I suppose the same impulse which makes birds sing 
when the storm has blown over. 



RUIN OF CONSTABLE AND BALLANTYNE. 477 

" December 24. — Constable has a new scheme of publishing 
the works of the Author of Waverley in a superior style, at 
L.l, Is. volume. He says he will answer for making L.20,- 

000 of this, and liberally offered me any share of the profits. 

1 have no great claim to any, as I have only to contribute the 
notes, which are light work ; yet a few thousands coming in 
will be a good thing — besides the Printing Office. Constable, 
though valetudinary, and cross with his partner, is certainly as 
good a pilot in these rough seas as ever man put faith in. 

" December 25. — Abbotsford. — Arrived here last night at 
seven. Our halls are silent compared to last year, but let us 
be thankful — Barbarus has segetes ? Nullum numen abest, si 
sit prudentia. There shall be no lack of wisdom. But come — 
il faut cultiver notre jardin. I will accept no invitation for 
dinner, save one to Newton-Don, and Mertoun to-morrow, 
instead of Christmas-Day. On this day of general devotion, I 
have a particular call for gratitude. 

" January 14. — An odd mysterious letter from Constable, 
who has gone post to London. It strikes me to be that sort of 
letter which I have seen men write when they are desirous 
that their disagreeable intelligence should be rather appre- 
hended than expressed. I thought he had been in London a 
fortnight ago, disposing of property to meet this exigence, and 
so I think he should. Well, I must have patience. But these 
terrors and frights are truly annoying. ... A letter from 
J. B., mentioning Constable's journey, but without expressing 
much apprehension. He knows C. well, and saw him before 
his departure, and makes no doubt of his being able easily to 
extricate whatever may be entangled. I will not therefore 
make myself uneasy. I can help doing so surely, if I will. 
At least, I have given up cigars since the year began, and 
have now no wish to return to the habit, as it is called. I 
see no reason why one should not, with God's assistance, shun 
noxious thoughts, which foretell evil, and cannot remedy it." 

A few days after Sir Walter penned the last-quoted para- 
graph, Mr. Constable made his appearance in London. I saw 
him immediately. Having deferred his journey imprudently, 
he had performed it very rapidly ; and this exertion, with men- 
tal excitement, had brought on a sharp access of gout, which 
confined him for a couple of days to his hotel in the Adelphi — 
reluctantem draconem. A more impatient spirit never boiled in 
a feverish frame. It was then that I received my first infor- 
mation of Sir W. Scott's implication as a partner in the firm of 
Ballantyne. It was then also for the first time, that I saw full 



478 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

swing given to the tyrannical temper of the Czar. He looked, 
spoke, and gesticulated like some hoary despot, accustomed to 
nothing but the complete indulgence of every wish and whim, 
against whose sovereign authority his most trusted satraps and 
tributaries had suddenly revolted — open rebellion in twenty 
provinces — confusion in the capital — treason in the palace. 
I will not repeat his haughty ravings of scorn and wrath. I 
listened to these with wonder and commiseration; nor were 
such feelings mitigated when, having exhausted his violence of 
vituperation against many persons of whom I had never before 
heard him speak but as able and trusted friends, he cooled 
down sufficiently to answer my question as to the practical busi- 
ness on which the note announcing his arrival in town had sig- 
nified his urgent desire to take my advice. Constable told me 
that he had already seen one of the Hurst and Robinson firm, 
and that the storm which had seemed to be " blown over " had, 
he was satisfied, only been lulled for a moment to burst out in 
redoubled fury. If they went, however, he must follow. He 
had determined to support them through the coming gale as he 
had done through the last; and he had the means to do so 
effectually, provided Sir Walter Scott would stand by him 
heartily and boldly. 

The first and most obvious step was to make large sales of 
copyrights ; and it was not surprising that Constable should have 
formed most extravagant notions of the marketable value of 
the property of this nature in his possession. Every bookseller 
is very apt to do so. A manuscript is submitted to him ; he 
inspects it with coldness and suspicion ; with hesitation offers 
a sum for it ; obtains it, and sends it to be printed. He has 
hardly courage to look at the sheets as they are thrown off; 
but the book is at .last laid on his counter, and he from that 
moment regards it with an eye of parental fondness. It is 
his; he considers it in that light quite as much as does the 
author, and is likely to be at least as sorely provoked by any- 
thing in the shape of hostile criticism. If this be the usual 
working of self-love or self-interest in such cases, what wonder 
that the man who had at his disposal (to say nothing of in- 
numerable minor properties) the copyrights of the Encyclopae- 
dia Britannica, a moiety of the Edinburgh Review, nearly all 
Scott's Poetry, the Waverley Novels, and the advancing Life 
of Napoleon — who had made, besides, sundry contracts for 
novels by Scott, as yet unwritten — and who seriously viewed 
his plan of the new Miscellany as in itself the sure foundation 
of a gigantic fortune — what wonder that the sanguine Con- 



RUIN OF CONSTABLE AND BALLANTYNE. 479 

stable should have laid to his soul the nattering unction, that 
he had only to display such resources in some quarter totally 
above the momentary pressure of the trade, and command an 
advance of capital adequate to relieve him and all his allies 
from these unfortunate difficulties about a few paltry " sheafs " 
of stamped paper ? To be brief, he requested me to accom- 
pany him, as soon as he could get into his carriage, to the 
Bank of England, and support him (as a confidential friend of 
the Author of Waverley) in his application for a loan of from 
L.100,000 to L.200,000 on the security of the copyrights in his 
possession. It is needless to say that, without distinct instruc- 
tions from Sir Walter, I could not take upon me to interfere in 
such a business as this. Constable, when I refused, became 
livid with rage. After a long silence, he stamped on the 
ground, and swore that he could and would do alone. I left 
him in stern indignation. 

There was another scene of the same kind a day or two 
afterwards, when his object was to get me to back his ap- 
plication to Sir Walter to borrow L.20,000 in Edinburgh, and 
transmit it to him in London. I promised nothing but to 
acquaint Scott immediately with his request, and him with 
Scott's answer. Sir Walter, ere the message reached him, had 
been candidly told by Constable's own partner that any further 
advances would be mere folly. 

Constable lingered on, fluctuating between wild hope and 
savage despair, until, I seriously believe, he at last hovered on 
the brink of insanity. When he returned to Edinburgh, it 
was to confront creditors whom he knew he could not pay. 

Scott's Diary has — " Edinburgh, January 16. — Came 
through cold roads to as cold news. Hurst and Eobinson 
have suffered a bill to come back upon Constable, which I 
suppose infers the ruin of both houses. We shall soon see. 
Dined with the Skenes." — Mr. Skene assures me that he 
appeared that evening quite in his usual spirits, conversing on 
whatever topic was started as easily and gaily as if there had 
been no impending calamity; but at parting he whispered — 
" Skene, I have something to speak to you about ; be so good as 
to look in on me as you go to the Parliament House to-morrow." 
When Skene called in Castle Street, about half-past nine 
o'clock next morning, he found Scott writing in his study. He 
rose, and said — " IVLy friend, give me a shake of your hand — 
mine is that of a beggar." He then told him that Ballantyne 
had just been with him, and that his ruin was certain and com- 
plete ; explaining, briefly, the nature of his connexion with the 



480 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

three houses, whose downfall must that morning be made pub- 
lic. He added — "Don't fancy I am going to stay at home 
to brood idly on what can't be helped. I was at work upon 
Woodstock when you came in, and I shall take up the pen the 
moment I get back from Court. I mean to dine with you again 
on Sunday, and hope then to report progress to some purpose." 
— When Sunday came, he reported accordingly, that in spite 
of all the numberless interruptions of meetings and conferences 
with his partner and men of business — to say nothing of his 
anxieties on account of his wife and daughter — he had written 
a chapter of his novel every intervening day. And the Diary 
gives the precise detail. His exertions, he there says, were 
suspended for the 17th and 18th ; but in the course of the 19th, 
20th, and 21st, he wrote 38 pages of his novel — such pages 
that 70 of them made " half a volume of the usual size." 

Diary. — " January 17. — James Ballantyne this morning, 
good honest fellow, with a visage as black as the crook. He 
hopes no salvation ; has indeed taken measures to stop. It is 
hard, after having fought such a battle. Have apologised for 
not attending the Royal Society Club, who have a gaudeamus on 
this day, and seemed to count much on my being the preses. 
My old acquaintance, Miss Elizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, 
died suddenly. I cannot choose but wish it had been Sir W. 
S. ; and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have Anne, my wife, 
and Charles, to look after. I felt rather sneaking as I came 
home from the Parliament House — felt as if I were liable 
monstrari cligito in no very pleasant way. But this must be 
borne cum cceteris; and, thank God, however uncomfortable, I 
do not feel despondent." 

The reader may be curious to see what account Ballantyne's 
memorandum gives of that dark announcement on the morning 
of Tuesday the 17th. It is as follows : — " On the evening of 
the 16th, I received from Mr. Cadell a distinct message putting 
me in possession of the truth. I called immediately in Castle 
Street, but found Sir Walter had gained an unconscious respite 
by being engaged out at dinner. It was between eight and nine 
next morning that I made the final communication. No doubt 
he was greatly stunned — but, upon the whole, he bore it with 
wonderful fortitude. He then asked — ' Well, what is the 
actual step we must first take ? I suppose we must do some- 
thing ? ' I reminded him that two or three thousand pounds 
were due that day, so that we had only to do what we must- 
do — refuse payment — to bring the disclosure sufficiently 
before the world. He took leave of me with these striking 



BUIN OF CONSTABLE AND BALLANTYNE. 481 

words — 'Well, James, depend upon that, I will never for- 
sake you.' " 

In the course of that unhappy yet industrious week, Sir 
Walter's situation as Ballantyne's partner became universally 
known. Mr. Ballantyne, as an individual, had no choice but 
to resolve on the usual course of a commercial man unable to 
meet engagements : but Scott from the first moment determined 
to avoid, if by his utmost efforts it could be avoided, the neces- 
sity of participating in such steps. He immediately placed his 
whole affairs in the hands of three trustees (James Jollie, W.S., 
Alex. Mony penny, W.S., and John Gibson, W.S.), all men of 
the highest honour and of great professional experience ; and 
declined every offer of private assistance. These were very 
numerous : — his eldest son and his daughter-in-law eagerly 
tendered the whole fortune at their disposal, and the principal 
banks of Edinburgh, especially the house of Sir William Forbes 
& Co., which was the one most deeply involved in Ballantyne's 
obligations, sent partners of the first consideration, who were 
his personal friends, to offer liberal additional accommodation. 
What, I think, affected him most of all, was a letter from Mr. 
Poole, his daughters' harp-master, offering L.500, — " probably," 
says the Diary, "his all." From London, also, he received 
various kind communications. Among others, one tendering 
an instant advance of L. 30,000 — a truly munificent message, 
conveyed through a distinguished channel, but the source of 
which was never revealed to him, nor to me until some years 
after his death, and even then under conditions of secrecy. 
To all, his answer was the same. And within a few days he 
had reason to believe that the creditors would, as a body, assent 
to let things go in the course which he and his trustees sug- 
gested. 

His Diary has this entry for the 24th January : — "I went to 
the Court for the first time to-day, and, like the man with the 
large nose, thought everybody was thinking of me and my mis- 
haps. Many were, undoubtedly, and all rather regrettingly ; 
some obviously affected. It is singular to see the difference of 
men's manner whilst they strive to be kind or civil in their 
way of addressing me. Some smiled as they wished me good- 
day, as if to say, ' Think nothing about it, my lad ; it is quite out 
of our thoughts.' Others greeted me with the affected gravity 
which one sees and despises at a funeral. The best-bred — all 
I believe meaning equally well — just shook hands and went 
on. A foolish puff in the papers, calling on men and gods to 
assist a popular author, who having choused the public of many 
2i 



482 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

thousands, had not the sense to keep wealth when he had it. 
If I am hard pressed, and measures used against me, I must 
use all means of legal defence, and subscribe myself bankrupt 
in a petition for sequestration. It is the course one should, at 
any rate, have advised a client to take. But for this I would, 
in a Court of Honour, deserve to lose my spurs. No, — if they 
permit me, I will be their vassal for life, and dig in the 
mine of my imagination to find diamonds (or what may 
sell for such) to make good my engagements, not to enrich 
myself. And this from no reluctance to be called the Insolvent, 
which I probably am, but because I will not put out of the 
power of my creditors the resources, mental or literary, which 
yet remain to me." 

Jan. 26. — " Gibson comes with a joyful face, announcing that 
almost all the creditors had agreed to a private trust. This is 
handsome and confidential, and must warm my best efforts to 
get them out of the scrape. I will not doubt — to doubt is to 
lose. Sir William Forbes took the chair, and behaved, as he 
has ever done, with the generosity of ancient faith and early 
friendship. That House is more deeply concerned than most. 
In what scenes have Sir William and I not borne share to- 
gether! desperate and almost bloody affrays, rivalries, deep 
drinking matches, and finally, with the kindliest feelings on 
both sides, somewhat separated by his retiring much within the 
bosom of his family, and I moving little beyond mine. It is 
fated our planets should cross, though, and that at the peri- 
ods most interesting for me. Down — down — a hundred 
thoughts." 

There soon, however, emerged new difficulties. It would in- 
deed have been very wonderful if all the creditors of three com- 
panies, whose concerns were inextricably in tertangled, had at 
once adopted the views of the meeting, composed entirely of 
eminent citizens of Edinburgh, over which Sir William Forbes 
presided on the 26th of January ; nor, it is proper to add, was 
Scott himself aware, until some days later, of the extent to 
which the debts of the two houses of Constable and Hurst ex- 
ceeded their assets : circumstances necessarily of the greatest 
importance to the holders of Ballantyne's paper. In point of 
fact, it turned out that the obligations of the three firms had, 
by what is termed cross-rankings, reached respectively sums 
far beyond the calculations of any of the parties. On the full 
revelation of this state of things, some of the printers' creditors 
felt great disinclination to close with Scott's proposals; and 
there ensued a train of harassment, the detail of which must be 



RUIN OF CONSTABLE AND BALLANTYNE. 483 

left in his Diary, but which was finally terminated according to 
his own original, and really most generous suggestion. 

The day of calamity revealed the fact that James Ballantyne 
personally possessed no assets whatever. The claims against 
Sir Walter, as the sole really responsible partner in the printing 
firm, and also as an individual, settled into a sum of about 
L. 130,000. On much heavier debts Constable & Co. paid ulti- 
mately 2s. 9d. in the pound ; Hurst & Robinson about Is. 3d. 
The Ballantyne firm had as yet done nothing to prevent their fol- 
lowing the same line of conduct. It might still have allowed 
itself (and not James Ballantyne merely as an individual) to be 
declared bankrupt, and obtained a speedy discharge, like these 
booksellers, from all its obligations. But for Scott's being a 
partner, the whole affair must have been settled in a very short 
time. If he could have at all made up his mind to let com- 
mercial matters take the usual commercial course, the creditors 
of the firm would have brought into the market whatever prop- 
erty, literary or otherwise, Scott at the hour of failure pos- 
sessed ; they would have had a right to his liferent of Abbots- 
ford, among other things — and to his reversionary interest in the 
estate, in case either his eldest son or his daughter-in-law should 
die without leaving issue, and thus void the provisions of their 
marriage-contract. All this being disposed of, the result would 
have been a dividend very far superior to what the creditors 
of Constable and Hurst received ; and in return, the partners 
in the printing firm would have been left at liberty to reap for 
themselves the profits of their future exertions. Things were, 
however, complicated in consequence of the transfer of Abbots- 
ford in January 1825. Some creditors now had serious thoughts 
of contesting the validity of that transaction ; but a little re- 
flexion and examination satisfied them that nothing could be 
gained by such an attempt. On the other hand, Sir Walter felt 
that he had done wrong in placing any part of his property be- 
yond the reach of his creditors, by entering into that marriage- 
contract without a previous most deliberate examination into 
the state of his responsibilities. He must have felt in this 
manner, though I have no sort of doubt, that the result of such 
an examination in January 1825, if accompanied by an instant 
calling in of all counter-bills, would have been to leave him at 
perfect liberty to do all that he did upon that occasion. How- 
ever that may have been, and whatever may have been his deli- 
cacy respecting this point, he persisted in regarding the embar- 
rassment of his commercial firm with the feelings not of a 
merchant but of a gentleman. He thought that by devoting 



484 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the rest of his life to the service of his creditors, he could, in 
the upshot, pay the last farthing he owed them. They (with 
one or two exceptions) applauded his honourable intentions and 
resolutions, and partook, to a certain extent, in the self-reliance 
of their debtor. Nor had they miscalculated as to their interest. 
Nor had Sir Walter calculated wrongly. He paid the penalty 
of health and life, but he saved his honour and his self- 
respect : — 

" The glory dies not, and the grief is past." x 

As to the difficulty that occurred in February, a single 
extract from his Diary must here suffice. On the 16th he 
writes thus: — "'Misfortune's growling bark' comes louder 
and louder. By assigning my whole property to trustees for 
behoof of creditors, with two works in progress and nigh 
publication, and with all my future literary labours, I con- 
ceived I was bringing into the field a large fund of payment, 
which could not exist without my exertions, and that thus 
far I was entitled to a corresponding degree of indulgence. I 
therefore supposed, on selling this house, and various other 
property, and on receiving the price of Woodstock and Napo- 
leon, that they would give me leisure to make other exertions, 
and be content with the rents of Abbotsford, without attempt- 
ing a sale. But Gibson last night came in after dinner, and 
gave me to understand that the Bank of Scotland see this in 
a different point of view, and consider my contribution of the 
produce of past, present, and future labours, as compensated 
in fall by their accepting of the trust-deed, instead of pursuing 
the mode of sequestration, and placing me in the Gazette. 
They therefore expect the trustees to commence a lawsuit to 
reduce the marriage-settlement which settles the estate upon 
Walter; thus loading me with a most expensive suit, and I 
suppose selling library and whatever else they can lay hold 
on. Now this seems unequal measure, and would besides of 
itself totally destroy any power of fancy — of genius, if it 
deserves the name, which may remain to me. A man cannot 
write in the House of Correction ; and this species of peine 
forte et dure which is threatened, would render it impossible 
for one to help himself or others. So I told Gibson I had 
my mind made up as far back as the 24th of January, not 
to suffer myself to be harder pressed than law would press 
me. If they take the sword of the law, I must lay hold of 

1 Sonnet on Scott's death, by Sir E. Brydges. 



ASSIGNMENT OF PROPERTY. 485 

the shield. If they are determined to consider me as an irre- 
trievable bankrupt, they have no title to object to my settling 
upon the usual terms which the statute requires. They prob- 
ably are of opinion, that I will be ashamed to do this by 
applying publicly for a sequestration. Now, my feelings are 
different. I am ashamed to owe debts I cannot pay ; but I 
am not ashamed of being classed with those to whose rank 
I belong. The disgrace is in being an actual bankrupt, not 
in being made a legal one. I had like to have been too hasty 
in this matter. I must have a clear understanding that I am 
to be benefited or indulged in some way, if I bring in two 
such funds as those works in progress, worth certainly from 
L.10,000 to L.15,000." 

It was by and by settled that he should be left in the 
undisturbed possession of Abbotsford, on his pledging himself 
to dispose immediately of all his other property, of what kind 
soever, for the behoof of the creditors — to limit his personal 
expenses henceforth within his official salary — and, continuing 
his literary labour with his best diligence, to pay in all its 
profits until the debt should be wholly obliterated. Excepting 
from a single London Jew, a creditor originally of Hurst's, no 
practical interference with this arrangement was ever subse- 
quently threatened. Scott, meanwhile, laboured on at his desk. 
In the very darkest period of his anxieties, he not only con- 
tinued his Novel and his Buonaparte, but threw off his graceful 
and humorous, as well as sagacious and instructive reviewal 
of Pepys' Diary : and before that was published, he had also 
most effectually displayed his self-possession by a political 
demonstration under a new but thin disguise. 

As soon as Parliament met, the recent convulsion in the 
commercial world became the subject of some very remarkable 
debates in the Lower House; and the Ministers, tracing it 
mainly to the rash facility of bankers in yielding credit to 
speculators, proposed to strike at the root of the evil by taking 
from private banks the privilege of circulating their own notes 
as money, and limiting even the Bank of England to the issue 
of notes of L.5 value and upwards. The Government designed 
that this regulation should apply to Scotland as well as Eng- 
land ; and the northern public received the announcement with 
almost universal reprobation. The Scotch banks apprehended 
a most serious curtailment of their profits ; and the merchants 
and traders of every class were well disposed to back them in 
opposing the Ministerial innovation. Scott, ever sensitively 
jealous as to the interference of English statesmen with the 



486 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

internal affairs of his native kingdom, took the matter up with 
as much zeal as he could have displayed against the Union 
had he lived in the days of Queen Anne. His national feel- 
ings may have been somewhat stimulated, perhaps, by his deep 
sense of gratitude for the generous forbearance which several 
Edinburgh banking-houses had just been exhibiting toward 
himself; and I think it need not be doubted, moreover, that 
the splendida bilis which, as the Diary confesses, his own mis- 
fortunes had engendered, demanded some escape-valve. Hence 
the three Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, which appeared 
first in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, and were afterwards 
collected into a pamphlet by the late Mr. Blackwood, who, on 
that occasion, for the first time, had justice done to his per- 
sonal character by "the Black Hussar of Literature." 

These diatribes produced in Scotland a sensation not, per- 
haps, inferior to that of the Drapier's Letters in Ireland ; a 
greater one, certainly, than any political tract had excited in 
the British public at large since the appearance of Burke's 
Beflections on the French Be volution. They were answered 
most elaborately and acutely in the London Courier (then the 
semi-official organ of Lord Liverpool's Government) by Sir 
Walter's friend, the secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Croker: 
who perhaps hazarded, in the heat of his composition, a few 
personal allusions that might as well have been spared, and 
which might have tempted a less good-natured antagonist to 
a fiery rejoinder. Meeting, however, followed meeting, and 
petition on petition came up with thousands of signatures ; 
and the Ministers erelong found that the opposition, of which 
Malachi had led the van, was, in spite of all their own speeches 
and Mr. Croker's essays, too strong and too rapidly strength- 
ening, to be safely encountered. The Scotch part of the meas- 
ure was dropt; and Scott, having carried his practical object, 
was not at all disposed to persist in a controversy which, if 
farther pursued, could scarcely, as he foresaw, fail to interrupt 
the kindly feelings that Croker and he had for many years 
entertained for each other, and also to aggravate and prolong, 
unnecessarily, the resentment with which several of his friends 
in the Cabinet had regarded his unlooked-for appearance as a 
hostile agitator. 

When the Court of Session was to rise for the spring vaca- 
tion he had to take farewell of his house in Castle Street. 
Henceforth, his family were to stay always, as he designed, 
in the country — and a small hired lodging was to suffice for 
himself when his duty called him to be in Edinburgh. In one 



LEAVES HOUSE IN CASTLE STREET. 487 

day's diary he says, — " Looked out a quantity of things, to 
go to Abbotsford ; for we are flitting, if you please. It is with 
a sense of pain that I leave behind a parcel of trumpery prints 

and little ornaments, once the pride of Lady S 's heart, 

but which she sees consigned with indifference to the chance 
of an auction. Things that have had their day of importance 
with me I cannot forget, though the merest trifles. But I am 
glad that she, with bad health, and enough to vex her, has not 
the same useless mode of associating recollections with this 
unpleasant business." — Again, on the 13th March — "I have 
hinted in these notes, that I am not entirely free from a sort 
of gloomy fits, with a fluttering of the heart and depression 
of spirits, just as if I knew not what was going to befall me. 
I can sometimes resist this successfully, but it is better to 
evade than to combat it. The hang-dog spirit may have orig- 
inated in the confusion and chucking about of our old furni- 
ture, the stripping of walls of pictures, and rooms of ornaments ; 
the leaving of a house we have so long called our home, is 
altogether melancholy enough. Meanwhile, to make my recu- 
sant spirit do penance, I have set to work to clear away papers 
and pack them for my journey. What a strange medley of 
thoughts such a task produces ! There lie letters which made 
the heart throb when received, now lifeless and uninteresting 
— as are perhaps their writers — riddles which have been 
read — schemes which time has destroyed or brought to matu- 
rity — memorials of friendships and enmities which are now 
alike faded. Thus does the ring of Saturn consume itself. 
To-day annihilates yesterday, as the old tyrant swallowed his 
children, and the snake its tail. But I must say to my jour- 
nal as poor Byron did to Moore — 'T> — n it, Tom, don't be 
poetical.' " 

" March 14. — J. B. called this morning to take leave, and 
receive directions about proofs, &c. Talks of the uproar about 
Malachi ; but I am tired of Malachi — the humour is off, and 
I have said what I wanted to say, and put the people of Scot- 
land on their guard, as well as ministers, if they like to be 
warned. They are gradually destroying what remains of 
nationality, and making the country tabula rasa for doctrines 
of bold innovation. Their loosening and grinding down all 
those peculiarities which distinguished us as Scotsmen, will 
throw the country into a state in which it will be universally 
turned to democracy, and instead of canny Saunders, they will 
have a very dangerous North-British neighbourhood. Some 
lawyer expressed to Lord Elibank an opinion, that at the 



488 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Union the English law should have been extended all over 
Scotland. 1 1 cannot say how that might have answered our 
purpose.' said Lord Patrick, who was never nonsuited for want 
of an answer, -but it would scarce have suited yours, since by 
this time the Aberdeen Advocates ] would have possessed them- 
selves of all the business in Westminster Hall.' " 

•-March 15. — This morning I leave No. 39 Castle Street. 
for the last time. • The cabin was convenient,' and habit had 
made it agreeable to me. I never reckoned upon a change in 
this particular so long as I held an ofhce in the Court of Ses- 
sion. In all my former changes of residence it was from good 
to better — this is retrograding. I leave this house for sale, 
and I cease to be an Edinburgh citizen, in the sense of being 
a proprietor, which my father and I have been for sixty years 
at least. So farewell, poor 39, and may you never harbour 
worse people than those who now leave you. Xot to desert 
the Lares all at once, Lady S. and Anne remain till Sunday. 
As for me, I go, as aforesaid, this morning. 

'Ha til mi tulidh ' ! — " 2 

Sir Walter's Diary begins to be clouded with a darker 
species of distress than mere loss of wealth could bring to his 
spirit. His darling grandson is sinking at a distance from him 
under incurable disease. At home the misfortunes against 
which his manhood struggled with stern energy were en- 
countered by his affectionate wife under the disadvantages of 
enfeebled health : and it seems but too evident that mental 
pain and mortification had a great share in hurrying her ail- 
ments to a fatal end. Nevertheless, all his afflictions do not 
seem to have interrupted for more than a day or two his usual 
course of labour. With rare exceptions he appears, all 
through this trying period, to have finished his daily task — 
thirty printed pages of Woodstock — until that novel was 
completed ; or, if he paused in it. he gave a similar space of 
time to some minor production ; such as his paper on the Life 
of Kemble. He also corresponded much as usual (notwith- 
standing all he says about indolence on that score) with his 
absent friends ; and I need scarcely add, that his duties as 
Sheriff claimed many hours every week. The picture of reso- 
lution and industry which this portion of his Journal presents, 

1 The Solicitors of Aberdeen enjoy somehow the title of Advocates. 
2 1 return no more. 



DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS. 489 

is certainly as remarkable as the boldest imagination conld 
have conceived. 

" Abbotsford, March 17. — A letter from Lockhart. My 
worst augury is verified; — the medical people think poor 
Johnnie is losing strength; he is gone with his mother to 
Brighton. The bitterness of this probably impending calamity 
is extreme. The child was almost too good for this world; — 
beautiful in features ; and though spoiled by every one, having 
one of the sweetest tempers as well as the quickest intellect 
I ever saw; a sense of humour quite extraordinary in a 
child, and, owing to the general notice which was taken of him, 
a great deal more information than suited his years. The poor 
dear love had so often a slow fever, that when it pressed its 
little lips to mine, I always foreboded to my own heart what 
all I fear are now aware of. 

" March 18. — Slept indifferently, and under the influence 
of Queen Mab, seldom auspicious to me. Dreamed of reading 
the tale of the Prince of the Black Marble Islands to Little 
Johnnie, extended on a paralytic chair, and yet telling all his 
pretty stories about Ha-Papa, as he calls me, and Chiefswood 
— and waked to think I should see the little darling no more, 
or see him as a thing that had better never have existed. Oh 
misery ! misery ! that the best I can wish for him is early 
death, with all the wretchedness to his parents that is likely to 
ensue ! 

"March 19. — Lady S., the faithful and true companion of 
my fortunes, good and bad, for so many years, has, but with 
difficulty, been prevailed on to see Dr. Abercrombie, and his 
opinion is far from favourable. Her asthmatic complaints are 
fast terminating in hydropsy, as I have long suspected ; yet 
the announcement of the truth is overwhelming. They are to 
stay a little longer in town to try the effects of a new medicine. 
On Wednesday, they propose to return hither — a new afflic- 
tion, where there was enough before ; yet her constitution is so 
good, that if she will be guarded by advice, things may be yet 
ameliorated. God grant it ! for really these misfortunes come 
too close upon each other. 

" March 28. — We have now been in solitude for some time — 
myself nearly totally so, excepting at meals. One is tempted 
to ask himself, knocking at the door of his own heart, Do you 
love this extreme loneliness ? I can answer conscientiously, 
Ida. The love of solitude was with me a passion of early 
youth; when in my teens, I used to fly from company to 
indulge in visions and airy castles of my own, the disposal of 



490 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

ideal wealth, and the exercise of imaginary power. This feel- 
ing prevailed even till I was eighteen, when love and ambition 
awakening with other passions, threw me more into society, 
from which I have, however, at times withdrawn myself, and 
have been always even glad to do so. I have risen from a 
feast satiated; and unless it be one or two persons of very 
strong intellect, or whose spirits and good-humour amuse me, 
I wish neither to see the high, the low, nor the middling class 
of society. This is a feeling without the least tinge of misan- 
thropy, which I always consider as a kind of blasphemy of a 
shocking description. If God bears with the very worst of us, 
we may surely endure each other. If thrown into society, I 
always have, and always will endeavour to bring pleasure with 
me, at least to shew willingness to please. But for all this, ' I 
had rather live alone,' and I wish my appointment, so conven- 
ient otherwise, did not require my going to Edinburgh. But 
this must be, and in my little lodging I shall be lonely enough. 
"April 1. — Ex uno die disce omnes. — Rose at seven or 
sooner, studied and wrote till breakfast, with Anne, about a 
quarter before ten. Lady Scott seldom able to rise till twelve 
or one. Then I write or study again till one. At that hour 
to-day I drove to Huntley Burn, and walked home by one of 
the hundred and one pleasing paths which I have made through 
the woods I have planted — now chatting with Tom Purdie, 
who carries my plaid and speaks when he pleases, telling long 
stories of hits and misses in shooting twenty years back — 
sometimes chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy — and 
sometimes attending to the humours of two curious little ter- 
riers of the Dandie Dinmont breed, together with a noble wolf- 
hound puppy which Glengarry has given me to replace Maida. 
This brings me down to the very moment I do tell — the rest 
is prophetic. I shall feel drowsy when this book is locked, 
and perhaps sleep until Dalgleish brings the dinner summons. 
Then I shall have a chat with Lady S. and Anne ; some broth 
or soup, a slice of plain meat — and man's chief business, in 
Dr. Johnson's estimation, is briefly despatched. Half an hour 
with my family, and half an hour's coquetting with a cigar, a 
tumbler of weak whisky and water, and a novel perhaps, lead 
on to tea, which sometimes consumes another half hour of 
chat ; then Avrite and read in my own room till ten o'clock at 
night ; a little bread, and then a glass of porter, and to bed ; 
and this, very rarely varied by a visit from some one, is the 
tenor of my daily life — and a very pleasant one indeed, were 
it not for apprehensions about Lady S. and poor Johnnie. 



WOODSTOCK. 491 

The former will, I think, do well ; for the latter — I fear — I 
fear — 

" April 3. — I have the extraordinary and gratifying news 
that Woodstock is sold for L.8228 ; all ready money — a match- 
less sale for less than three months' work." [The reader will 
understand that, the novel being sold for the behoof of J. B. 
and Co.'s creditors, this sum includes the cost of printing the 
first edition, as well as paper.] " If Napoleon does as well, or 
near it, it will put the trust affairs in high flourish. Four or 
five years of leisure and industry would, with such success, 
amply replace my losses. I have a curious fancy ; I will go 
set two or three acorns, and judge by their success in growing 
whether I shall succeed in clearing my way or not. I have a 
little toothache keeps me from working much to-day — besides 
I sent off copy for Napoleon." 

The price received for Woodstock shews what eager competi- 
tion had been called forth among the booksellers, when, after 
the lapse of several years, Constable's monopoly of Sir Walter's 
novels was abolished by their common calamity. The interest 
excited, not only in Scotland and England, but all over civil- 
ized Europe, by the news of Scott's misfortunes, must also 
have had its influence in quickening this commercial rivalry. 
The reader need hardly be told, that the first meeting of 
James Ballantyne & Company's creditors witnessed the trans- 
formation, a month before darkly prophesied, of the " Great 
Unknown" into the "Too-well-known." Even for those who 
had long ceased to entertain any doubt as to the main source 
at least of the Waverley romances, there would have been 
something stirring in the first confession of the author; but 
it in fact included the avowal, that he had stood alone in 
the work of creation ; and when the mighty claim came in the 
same breath with the announcement of personal ruin, the 
effect on the community of Edinburgh was electrical. It is, 
in my opinion, not the least striking feature in his Diary, that 
it contains no allusion (save the ominous one of 18th Decem- 
ber) to this long-withheld revelation. He notes his painful 
anticipation of returning to the Parliament House — monstrari 
digito — as an insolvent. It does not seem even to have 
occurred to him, that when he appeared there the morning 
after his creditors had heard his confession, there could not 
be many men in the place but must gaze on his familiar feat- 
ures with a mixture of curiosity, admiration, and sympathy, 
of which a hero in the moment of victory might have been 
proud — which might have swelled the heart of a martyr as 



492 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

he was bound to the stake. The universal feeling was, I 
believe, much what the late amiable and accomplished Earl 
of Dudley expressed to Mr. Morritt when these news reached 
them at Brighton. — " Scott ruined ! " said he, " the author of 
Waverley ruined ! Good God ! let every man to whom he has 
given months of delight give him a sixpence, and he will rise 
to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild ! " 

It is no wonder that the book, which it was known he had 
been writing during this crisis of distress, should have been 
expected with solicitude. Shall we find him, asked thousands, 
to have been master truly of his genius in the moment of this 
ordeal ? Shall we trace anything of his own experiences in 
the construction of his imaginary personages and events ? — I 
know not how others interpreted various passages in Wood- 
stock, but there were not a few that carried deep meaning for 
such of Scott's own friends as were acquainted with, not his 
pecuniary misfortune alone, but the drooping health of his 
wife, and the consolation afforded him by the dutiful devotion 
of his daughter Anne, in whose character and demeanour a 
change had occurred exactly similar to that painted in poor 
Alice Lee : " A light joyous air, with something of a humorous 
expression, which seemed to be looking for amusement, had 
vanished before the touch of affliction, and a calm melancholy 
supplied its place, which seemed on the watch to administer 
comfort to others." In several mottoes, and other scraps of 
verse, the curious reader will find similar traces of the facts 
and feelings recorded in the author's Diary. As to the novel 
itself, though none can pretend to class it in the very highest 
rank of his works, since we feel throughout the effects of the 
great fundamental error, likened by a contemporary critic to 
that of the writer who should lay his scene at Eome immediately 
after the battle of Philippi, and introduce Brutus as the sur- 
vivor in that conflict, and Cicero as his companion in victory ; 
yet even this censor is forced to allow that Woodstock displays 
certain excellences, not exemplified in all the author's fictions, 
and which attest, more remarkably than any others could have 
done, the complete self-possession of the mind when composing 
it. The success of the book was great : large as the price was, 
its publishers had no reason to repent their bargain; and of 
course the rapid receipt of such a sum as L.8000, the product of 
hardly three months' labour, highly gratified the body of cred- 
itors, whose debtor had devoted to them whatever labour his 
health should henceforth permit him to perform. 

His Diary shews that he very soon began another work of 



CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE. 493 

fiction ; and that lie from the first designed the Chronicles of 
the Canongate to be published by Mr. Robert Cadell. That 
gentleman's connexion with Constable was, from circumstances 
of which the reader may have traced various little indications, 
not likely to be renewed after the catastrophe of their old 
copartnership. They were now endeavouring to establish 
themselves in separate businesses ; and each was, of course, 
eager to secure the countenance of Sir Walter. He did not 
hesitate a moment. In the prudence at least of the senior 
there could no longer be any confidence ; and Cadell's frank 
conduct in warning him against Constable's last mad proposal 
about a guarantee for L.20,000, had produced a strong impres- 
sion. 

The progress of the domestic story will be best given by a 
few more extracts from the Diary : — 

"April 8. — We expect a raid of folks to visit us this morn- 
ing, whom we must have dined before our misfortunes. Save 
time, wine, and money, these misfortunes — and so far are con- 
venient things — Besides, there is a dignity about them when 
they come only like the gout in its mildest shape, to authorise 
diet and retirement, the night-gown and the velvet shoe : — 
when the one comes to chalk-stones and you go to prison 
through the other, it is the devil. Or compare the effects of 
Sieur Gout and absolute poverty upon the stomach — the 
necessity of a bottle of laudanum in the one case, the want of 
a morsel of meat in the other. Laidlaw's infant, which died 
on Wednesday, is buried to-day. The people coming to visit 
prevent my going — and I am glad of it. I hate funerals — 
always did ; — there is such a mixture of mummery with real 
grief — the actual mourner perhaps heart-broken, and all the 
rest making solemn faces, and whispering observations on the 
weather and public news, and here and there a greedy fellow 
enjoying the cake and wine. I saw the poor child's funeral 
from a distance. Ah, that Distance! What a magician for 
conjuring up scenes of joy or sorrow, smoothing all asperities, 
reconciling all incongruities, veiling all absurdities, softening 
every coarseness, doubling every effect by the influence of the 
imagination. A Scottish wedding should be seen at a distance ; 
— the gay band of dancers just distinguished amid the elderly 
group of the spectators — the glass held high, and the distant 
cheers as it is swallowed, should be only a sketch, not a fin- 
ished Dutch picture, when it becomes brutal and boorish. 
Scotch psalmody, too, should be heard from a distance. The 
grunt and the snivel, and the whine and the scream, should all 



494 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

be blended in that deep and distant sound, which, rising and 
falling like the Eolian harp, may have some title to be called 
the praise of one's Maker. Even so the distant funeral : the 
few mourners on horseback, with their plaids wrapt around 
them — the father heading the procession as they enter the 
river, and pointing out the ford by which his darling is to be 
carried on the last long road — none of the subordinate figures 
in discord with the general tone of the incident, but- seeming 
just accessions, and no more ; this is affecting. 
" April 24,. — Constable is sorely broken down. 

' Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart 
That's sorry yet for thee. 1 

His conduct has not been what I deserved at his hand ; but I 
believe that, walking blindfold himself, he misled me without 
malice prepense. It is best to think so «at least, until the 
contrary be demonstrated. To nourish angry passions against 
a man whom I really liked, would be to lay a blister on my 
own heart. 

" May 6. — The same scene of hopeless (almost) and unavail- 
ing anxiety. Still welcoming me with a smile, and asserting 
she is better. I fear the disease is too deeply entwined with 
the principles of life. I am a tolerable stoic, but preach to 
myself in vain. 

' Are these things, then, necessities? 
Then let us meet them like necessities.' 

" May 11. Charlotte was unable to take leave of me, being 
in a sound sleep, after a very indifferent night. Perhaps it was 
as well. Emotion might have hurt her; and nothing I could 
have expressed would have been worth the risk. I have fore- 
seen, for two years and more, that this menaced event could 
not be far distant. I have seen plainly, within the last two 
months, that recovery was hopeless. And yet to part with the 
companion of twenty-nine years, when so very ill — that I did 
not, could not foresee. It withers my heart to think of it, and 
to recollect that I can hardly hope again to seek confidence 
and counsel from that ear to which all might be safely con- 
fided." 

His niece Miss Anne Scott (daughter of Thomas) had kindly 
arrived before he was thus forced to quit the scene, and repair 
alone to his new lodgings in Edinburgh : — " Diary — Mrs. 
Brown's Lodgings, North St. David Street. — May 14. A fair 



DEATH OF LADY SCOTT. 495 

good-morrow to you, Mr. Sun, who are shining so brightly on 
these dull walls. Methinks you look as if you were looking as 
bright on the banks of the Tweed ; but look where you will, 
Sir Sun, you look upon sorrow and suffering. — Hogg was here 
yesterday in danger, from having obtained an accommodation 
of L.100 from James Ballantyne, which he is now obliged to 
repay. I am unable to help the poor fellow, being obliged to 
borrow myself. But I long ago remonstrated against the trans- 
action at all, and gave him L.50 out of my pocket to avoid 
granting the accommodation, — but it did no good. 

" May 15. — Received the melancholy intelligence that all is 
over at Abbotsford. 

" Abbotsford, May 16. — She died at nine in the morning, 
after being very ill for two days — easy at last. I arrived here 
late last night. Anne is worn out, and has had hysterics, 
which returned on my arrival. Her broken accents were like 
those of a child — the language as well as the tones broken, 
but in the most gentle voice of submission. ' Poor mamma — 
never return again — gone for ever — a better place.' Then, 
when she came to herself, she spoke with sense, freedom, and 
strength of mind, till her weakness returned. It would have 
been inexpressibly moving to me as a stranger — what was it 
then to the father and the husband? For myself, I scarce 
know how I feel — sometimes as firm as the Bass Rock, some- 
times as weak as the water that breaks on it. I am as alert at 
thinking and deciding as I ever was in my life. Yet, when 
I contrast what this place now is, with what it has been not 
long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived 
of my family — all but poor Anne; an impoverished, an em- 
barrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and 
counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calami- 
tous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them 
alone. — Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me 
things to think of beyond my weary self-reflections. 

" I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my 
Charlotte — my thirty years' companion. There is the same 
symmetry of form, though those limbs are rigid which were once 
so gracefully elastic — but that yellow masque, with pinched 
features, which seems to mock life rather than emulate it, — 
can it be the face that was once so full of lively expression ? 
I will not look on it again. Anne thinks her little changed, 
because the latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she 
appeared under circumstances of extreme pain — mine go back 
to a period of comparative ease. If I write long in this way, 



496 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

I shall write down my resolution, which I should rather write 
up if I could. I wonder how I shall do with the large portion 
of thoughts which were hers for thirty years. I suspect they 
will be hers yet, for a long time at least. But I will not blaze 
cambric and crape in the public eye like a disconsolate widower, 
that most affected of all characters. 

" May 18. — Another day, and a bright one to the external 
world, again opens on us ; the air soft, and the flowers smiling, 
and the leaves glittering. They cannot refresh her to whom 
mild weather was a natural enjoyment. Cerements of lead and 
of wood already hold her — cold earth must have her soon. 
But it is not my Charlotte — it is not the bride of my youth, 
the mother of my children, that will be laid among the ruins 
of Dryburgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and 
pastime — No ! no ! She is sentient and conscious of my 
emotions somewhere — somehow : ivhere we cannot tell ; how 
we cannot tell ; yet would I not at this moment renounce the 
mysterious yet certain hope that I shall see her in a better 
world, for all that this world can give me. The necessity of this 
separation — that necessity which rendered it even a relief, — 
that and patience must be my comfort. I do not experience 
those paroxysms of grief which others do on the same occa- 
sion. I can exert myself, and speak even cheerfully with the 
poor girls. But alone, or if anything touches me, — the chok- 
ing sensation. I have been to her room : there was no voice in 
it — no stirring ; the pressure of the coffin was visible on the bed, 
but it had been removed elsewhere ; all was neat, as she loved it, 
but all was calm — calm as death. I remembered the last sight 
of her ; she raised herself in bed, and tried to turn her eyes 
after me, and said, with a sort of smile,. ' You all have such 
melancholy faces.' These were the last words I ever heard 
her utter, and I hurried away, for she did not seem quite 
conscious of what she said ; when I returned, immediately de- 
parting, she was in a deep sleep. It is deeper now. This 
was but seven days since. 

" They are arranging the chamber of death — that which was 
long the apartment of connubial happiness, and of whose 
arrangements (better than in richer houses) she was so proud. 
They are treading fast and thick. For weeks you could have 
heard a foot-fall. Oh, my God ! 

"May 19. — Anne, poor love, is ill with her exertions and 
agitation — cannot walk — and is still hysterical, though less 
so. We speak freely of her whom we have lost, and mix her 
name with our ordinary conversation. This is the rule of 



DEATH OF LADY SCOTT. 497 

nature. All primitive people speak of their dead, and I think 
virtuously and wisely. The idea of blotting the names of 
those who are gone out of the language and familiar discourse 
of those to whom they were dearest, is one of the rules of 
ultra-civilisation, which in so many instances strangle natural 
feeling by way of avoiding a painful sensation. The High- 
landers speak of their dead children as freely as of their 
living members — how poor Colin or Robert would have acted 
in such or such a situation. It is a generous and manly tone 
of feeling ; and so far as it may be adopted without affectation 
or contradicting the general habits of society, I reckon on 
observing it. 

" May 20. — To-night, I trust, will bring Charles or Lockhart, 
or both. Sophia's baby was christened on Sunday 14th May, at 
Brighton, by the name of Walter Scott. May God give him 
life and health to wear it with credit to himself and those 
belonging to him ! Melancholy to think that the next morn- 
ing after this ceremony deprived him of so near a relation ! 

" May 22. — Lockhart doubtful if Sophia's health will let 
him be here. Charles arrived last night, much affected, of 
course. Anne had a return of her fainting-fits on seeing him, 
and again upon seeing Mr. Ramsay, 1 the gentleman who performs 
the service. I heard him do so with the utmost propriety for 
my late friend, Lady Alvanley, 2 the arrangement of whose 
funeral devolved upon me. How little I could guess when, 
where, and with respect to whom, I should next hear those 
solemn words. Well, I am not apt to shrink from that which 
is my duty, merely because it is painful ; but I wish this day 
over. A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all 
were unreal that men seem to be doing and talking about 

"May 23. — About an hour before the mournful ceremony of 
yesterday, Walter arrived, having travelled express from Ire- 
land on receiving the news. He was much affected, poor fellow, 
— and no wonder. Poor Charlotte nursed him, and perhaps 
for that reason she was over partial to him. The whole scene 
floats as a sort of dream before me — the beautiful day, the 
grey ruins covered and hidden among clouds of foliage and 
flourish, where the grave, even in the lap of beauty, lay lurk- 
ing, and gaped for its prey. Then the grave looks, the hasty 
important bustle of men with spades and mattocks — the train 
of carriages — the coffin containing the creature that was so 
long the dearest on earth to me, and Avhom I was to consign to 

1 The Rev. E. B. Ramsay, now Dean of Edinburgh. 

2 Lady Alvanley died at Edinburgh, in January 1825. 
2 K 



498 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the very spot which in pleasure-parties we so frequently visited. 
It seems still as if this could not be really so. But it is so — 
and duty to God and to my children must teach me patience. 
Poor Anne has had longer fits since our arrival from Dryburgh 
than before, but yesterday was the crisis. She desired to hear 
prayers read by Mr. Ramsay, who performed the duty in the 
most solemn manner. But her strength could not carry it 
through. She fainted before the service was concluded. 

" May 24. — Slept wretchedly, or rather waked wretchedly 
all night, and was very sick and bilious in consequence, and 
scarce able to hold up my head with pain. A walk, however, 
with my sons, did me a deal of good; — indeed their society 
is the greatest support the world can afford me. Their ideas 
of everything are so just and honourable, kind towards their 
sisters, and affectionate to me, that I must be grateful to 
God for sparing them to me, and continue to battle with the 
world for their sakes, if not for my own. 

" May 25. — I had sound sleep to-night, and waked with little 
or nothing of the strange dreamy feeling which had made me 
for some days feel like one bewildered in a country where 
mist or snow has disguised those features of the landscape 
which are best known to him— This evening Walter left us, 
being anxious to return to his wife as well as to his regiment. 

" May 26. — A rough morning makes me think of St. 
George's Channel, which Walter must cross to-night or to- 
morrow to get to Athlone. His absence is a great blank in our 
circle, especially I think to his sister Anne, to whom he shews 
invariably much kindness. But indeed they do so without 
exception each towards the other; and in weal or wo have 
shewn themselves a family of love. I will go to town on 
Monday and resume my labours. Being now of a grave nature, 
they cannot go against the general temper of my feelings, and 
in other respects the exertion, as far as I am concerned, will 
do me good ; besides I must re-establish my fortune for the sake 
of the children, and of my own character. I have not leisure 
to indulge the disabling and discouraging thoughts that press 
on me. Were an enemy coming upon my house, would I not 
do my best to fight, although oppressed in spirits ? and shall a 
similar despondency prevent me from mental exertion? It 
shall not, by Heaven! This day and to-morrow I give to the 
currency of the ideas which have of late occupied my mind, 
and with Monday they shall be mingled at least with other 
thoughts and cares. — 

" Abbotsford, Saturday, June 17. — Left Edinburgh to-day, 



RETURN TO ABBOTSFORD. 499 

after Parliament-House. My two girls met me at Torsonce, 
which, was a pleasant surprise, and we returned in the sociable 
ail together. Found everything right and well at Abbotsford 
under the new regime. I again took possession of the family 
bed-room, and my widowed couch. This was a sore trial, but 
it was necessary not to blink such a resolution. Indeed, I did 
not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I 
can be beaten. 

"September 12. — I begin to fear Nap. will swell to seven 
volumes. — As I slept for a few minutes in my chair, to which 
I am more addicted than I could wish, I heard, as I thought, 
my poor wife call me by the familiar name of fondness which 
she gave me. My recollections on waking were melancholy 
enough. These be 

' The airy tongues that syllable men's names.' 

" September 13. — Wrote my task in the morning, and there- 
after had a letter from the sage Privy-counsellor . He 

proposes to me that I shall propose to the of , and 

offers his own right honourable intervention to bring so beauti- 
ful a business to bear. I am struck dumb — absolutely mute 
and speechless — and how to prevent him making me farther 
a fool is not easy, for he has left me no time to assure him of 
the absurdity of what he proposes ; and if he should ever hint 
at such a piece of d — d impertinence, what must the lady 
think of my conceit or of my feelings ! I will write to his pres- 
ent quarters, however, that he may, if possible, have warniug 
not to continue this absurdity." 1 

Lady Scott had not been quite four months dead, and the entry 
of the preceding day shews how extremely ill-timed was this com- 
munication, from a gentleman with whom Sir Walter had never 
had any intimacy. Nor will the next entry that I extract 
diminish this impression. In October he resolved to make a 
journey to London and Paris, in both which capitals he had 
reason to expect important material would be submitted to 
him as the biographer of Napoleon. At starting he writes : — 
" October 11. — We are ingenious self -tormentors. This journey 
annoys me more than anything of the kind in my life. My 
wife's figure seems to stand before me, and her voice is in my 
ears — ' Scott, do not go.' It half frightens me. Strange throb- 
bing at my heart, and a disposition to be very sick. It is just 

1 This was not the only proposition of the kind that reached him during 
his widowhood. In the present case there was very high rank and an 
ample fortune. 



500 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the effect of so many feelings which had been lulled asleep by 
the uniformity of my life, but which awaken on any new sub- 
ject of agitation. Poor, poor Charlotte ! ! I cannot daub it 
farther. I get incapable of arranging my papers too. I will 
go out for half an hour. God relieve me ! " 

His expedition was a very seasonable relief ; nor was he dis- 
appointed as to its direct object. By the kindness of Earl Bath- 
urst, Colonial Secretary of State, and the Under-secretaries, 
Mr. Wilmot Horton and Mr. Robert Hay (who were all at- 
tached friends of his), he had access to many unpublished 
documents preserved in Downing Street, and copious extracts 
were prepared under his directions. The Duke of Wellington 
was good enough to give him a MS. commentary of his own on 
the Russian campaign, and many hours of confidential conversa- 
tion respecting other parts of Buonaparte's military history. At 
Paris he was treated with equal kindness by Marshal Macdonald, 
with whom he had become acquainted a few years before, when 
the Marshal visited his paternal kindred in Scotland ; among 
others, Sir Walter's constant friend, Hector McDonald Bu- 
chanan. In both cities he was received with the most marked 
attention. The deep and respectful sympathy with which his 
misfortunes, and gallant behaviour under them, had been re- 
garded by all classes of men at home and abroad, was brought 
home to his perception in a way not to be mistaken. Finally, 
he had the satisfaction of settling his son Charles's destiny : 
the King personally undertaking that as soon as he had gradu- 
ated at Oxford, he should be launched in the diplomatic ser- 
vice. I must confine myself to a very few extracts from the 
Diary — which will illustrate, among other things, the range 
of his society on this occasion. 

" Windsor, October 20. — Commanded down to pass a day at 
Windsor. The Lodge in the Forest, though ridiculed by con- 
noisseurs, seems to be no bad specimen of a royal retirement, 
and is delightfully situated. A kind of cottage, too large per- 
haps for the style, but yet so managed that in the walks you 
only see parts of it at once, and these well composed and group- 
ing with the immense trees. His Majesty received me with 
the same mixture of kindness and courtesy which has always 
distinguished his conduct towards me. There was no company 
besides the royal retinue — Lady Conyngham — her daughter 
— and two or three other ladies. After we left table, there 
was excellent music by the royal band, who lay ambushed in a 
green-house adjoining the apartment. The King made me sit 
beside him, and talk a great deal — too much perhaps — for he 



JOURNEY TO LONDON AND PARIS. 501 

has the art of raising one's spirits, and making you forget the 
reienue which is prudent everywhere, especially at court. But 
he converses himself with so much ease and elegance, that you 
lose thoughts of the prince in admiring the well-bred and ac- 
complished gentleman. He is in many respects the model of a 
British Monarch — has little inclination to try experiments on 
government otherwise than through his Ministers — sincerely, 
I believe, desires the good of his subjects — is kind towards 
the distressed, and moves and speaks ' every inch a king.' I 
am sure such a man is fitter for us than one who would long to 
head armies, or be perpetually intermeddling with la grancle 
politique. A sort of reserve, which creeps on him daily, and 
prevents his going to places of public resort, is a disadvantage, 
and prevents his being so generally popular as is earnestly to 
be desired. This, I think, was much increased by the behav- 
iour of the rabble in the brutal insanity of the Queen's trial, 
when John Bull, meaning the best in the world, made such a 
beastly figure. — Pall-Mali, October 21. — Walked in the morn- 
ing with Sir William Knighton, and had much confidential 
chat, not fit to be here set down, in case of accidents. Ee- 
turned to a hasty dinner at Lockhart's, and then hurried away 
to see honest Dan Terry's theatre, called the Adelphi. The 
heat was dreadful, and Anne so unwell that she was obliged to 
be carried into Terry's house, — a curious dwelling no larger 
than a squirrel's cage, which he has contrived to squeeze out of 
the vacant space of the theatre, and which is accessible by a most 
complicated combination of staircases and small passages. 
There we had rare good porter and oysters after the play." 
Sir Walter returned from Paris about the middle of the ensu- 
ing month — and his progress from London homewards is indi- 
cated in the following entries : — " Oxford, November 21. — 
Breakfasted with Charles in his chambers at Brazen-nose, where 
he had everything very neat. How pleasant it is for a father 
to sit at his child's board ! It is like the aged man reclining 
under the shadow of the oak which he has planted. My poor 
plant has some storms to undergo, but were this expedition con- 
ducive to no more than his entrance into life under suitable aus- 
pices, I should consider the toil and the expense well bestowed. 

— Nov. 23. — Slept at Macclesfield. As we came in between 
ten and eleven, the people of the inn expressed surprise at our 
travelling so late, as the general distress of the manufacturers 
has rendered many of the lower classes desperately outrageous. 

— Nov. 24. Breakfasted at Manchester ; — pressed on — and by 
dint of exertion reached Kendal to sleep ; thus getting out of 



502 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

the region of the stern, sullen, unwashed artificers, whom you 
see lounging sulkily along the streets in Lancashire. God's 
justice is requiting, and will yet farther requite, those who have 
blown up this country into a state of unsubstantial opulence, 
at the expense of the health and morals of the lower classes. — 
Abbotsford, November 26. — Naturally reflected how much ex- 
pense has increased since I first travelled. My uncle's ser- 
vant, during the jaunts we made together while I was a boy, 
used to have his option of a shilling per diem for board wages, 
and usually preferred it to having his charges borne. A servant 
now-a-days, to be comfortable on the road, should have 4s. or 4s. 
6d. board wages, which before 1790 would have maintained his 
master. But if this be pitiful, it is still more so to find the altera- 
tion in my own temper. When young, on returning from such 
a trip as I have just had, my mind would have loved to dwell 
on all I had seen that was rich and rare, or have been placing, 
perhaps, in order, the various additions with which I had sup- 
plied my stock of information — and now, like a stupid boy 
blundering over an arithmetical question half obliterated on his 
slate, I go stumbling on upon the audit of pounds, shillings, 
and pence. Well — the skirmish has cost me L.200. I wished 

for information — and I have had to pay for it." 

On proceeding to Edinburgh to resume his official duties, 
Sir Walter established himself in a furnished house in Walker 
Street, it being impossible for him to leave his daughter alone 
in the country, and the aspect of his affairs being so much 
ameliorated that he did not think it necessary to carry the 
young lady to such a place as Mrs. Brown's lodgings. During 
the six ensuing months, however, he led much the same life of 
toil and seclusion from company which that of Abbotsford had 
been during the preceding autumn — very rarely dining abroad, 
except with one or two intinmte friends, en famille — still more 
rarely receiving even a single guest at home : all the while, in 
fact, he suffered great pain (enough to have disturbed effect- 
ually any other man's labours, whether oificial or literary) from 
successive attacks of rheumatism, which seems to have been 
fixed on him by the wet sheets of one of his French inns ; and 
his Diary contains, besides, various indications that his consti- 
tution was alread}^ shaking under the fatigue to which he had 
subjected it. Formerly, however great the quantity of work 
he put through his hands, his evenings were almost always 
reserved for the light reading of an elbow-chair, or the enjoy- 
ment of his family and friends. Now he seemed to grudge 
every minute that was not spent at the desk. The little that 



LIVING IN SECLUSION. 503 

he read of new books, or for mere amusement, was done by 
snatches in the course of his meals; and to walk, when he 
could walk at all, to the Parliament-House and back again, 
through the Prince's Street Gardens, was his only exercise and 
his only relaxation. Every ailment, of whatever sort, ended in 
aggravating his lameness ; and, perhaps, the severest test his 
philosophy encountered was the feeling of bodily helplessness 
that from week to week crept upon him. The winter, to make 
bad worse, was a very cold and stormy one. The growing 
sluggishness of his blood shewed itself in chilblains, not only 
on the feet but the fingers, and his handwriting becomes more 
and more cramped and confused. 

He spent a few days at Abbotsford at Christmas, and several 
weeks during the spring vacation ; but the frequent Saturday 
excursions were now out of the question — if for no other rea- 
son, on account of the quantity of books which he must have 
by him while working at his Napoleon. He says on the 30th 
of December — " Wrote hard. Last day of an eventful year ; 
much evil — and some good, but especially the courage to en- 
dure what Fortune sends, without becoming a pipe for her 
fingers. It is not the last day of the year ; but to-morrow be- 
ing Sunday, we hold our festival to-day. The Fergussons 
came, and we had the usual appliances of mirth and good 
cheer. Yet our party, like the chariot-wheels of Pharaoh in 
the Bed Sea, dragged heavily. — It must be allowed that the 
regular recurrence of annual festivals among the same indi- 
viduals has, as life advances, something in it that is melan- 
choly. We meet like the survivors of some perilous expedition, 
wounded and weakened ourselves, and looking through dimin- 
ished ranks to think of those who are no more. Or they are 
like the feasts of the Caribs, in which they held that the pale 
and speechless phantoms of the deceased appeared and mingled 
with the living. Yet where shall we fly from vain repining ? 
— or why should we give up the comfort of seeing our friends, 
because they can no longer be to us, or we to them, what we 
once were to each other ? " 

On again quitting Tweedside after the spring holidays (1827), 
the Diary has : — "I never could help admiring the concatena- 
tion between Ahithopel's setting his house in order and hang- 
ing himself. 1 The one seems to follow the other as a matter of 
course. But what frightens and disgusts me is those fearful 
letters from those who have been long dead, to those who linger 



1 2d Samuel, xvii. 23. 



504 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

on their wayfare through, the valley of tears. Those fine 
lines of Spencer came into my head — 

' The shade of youthful Hope is there, 

That lingered long, and latest died ; 
Ambition all dissolved to air, 

With phantom Honours by his side. 
What empty shadows glimmer nigh ? 

They once were Friendship, Truth, and Love ! 
Oh ! die to thought, to memory die, 

Since lifeless to my heart ye prove.' 1 

Ay, and can I forget the author — the frightful moral of his 
own vision ? What is this world ? — a dream within a dream : 
as we grow older, each step is an awakening. The youth awakes, 
as he thinks, from childhood — the full-grown man despises the 
pursuits of youth as visionary — the old man looks on manhood 
as a feverish dream. The grave the last sleep ? No ; it is the 
last and final awakening. 

"Edinburgh, May 15. — It is impossible not to compare this 
return to Edinburgh with others in more happy times. But 
we should rather recollect under what distress of mind I took 
-up my lodgings in Mrs. Brown's last summer. — Went to Court 
and resumed old habits. Heard the true history of . 2 Im- 
agination renders us liable to be the victims of occasional low 
spirits. All belonging to this gifted, as it is called, but often 
unhappy class, must have felt, that but for the dictates of relig- 
ion, or the natural recoil of the mind from the idea of dissolu- 
tion, there have been times when they would have been willing 
to throw away life as a child does a broken toy. I am sure I 
know one who has often felt so. God ! wdiat are we ? — 
Lords of nature ? — Why, a tile drops from a house-top, which an 
elephant would not feel more than the fall of a sheet of paste- 
board, and there lies his lordship. Or something of inconceiv- 
ably minute origin — the pressure of a bone, or the inflamma- 
tion of a particle of the brain — takes place, and the emblem of 
the Deity destroys himself or some one else. We hold our 
health and our reason on terms slighter than one would desire, 
were it in their choice, to hold an Irish cabin." 

These are melancholy entries. Most of those from which 
they have been selected begin with R. for Rheumatism, or R. B. 
for Rheumatism redoubled, and then mark the number of leaves 

1 "Poems by the late Honourable W. R. Spencer," p. 45. 

2 Sir Walter had this morning heard of the suicide of a man of warm 
imagination, to whom, at an earlier period, he was much attached. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO MAGAZINES. 505 

sent to Ballantyne — the proof-sheets corrected for press — or 
the calculations on which he reluctantly made up his mind to 
extend the Life of Buonaparte from six to seven, from seven to 
eight, and finally from eight to nine thick and closely-printed 
volumes. 

During the early months of 1827, however, he executed vari- 
ous minor tracts also : for the Quarterly Review, an article on 
"Mackenzie's Life and Works of John Home, author of Doug- 
las," which is, in fact, a rich chapter of Scott's own early remi- 
niscences, and gives many interesting sketches of the literary 
society of Scotland in the age of which Mackenzie was the last 
honoured relic ; — and for the Foreign Quarterly Review, then 
newly started under the editorship of Mr. R. P. Gillies, an in- 
genious and elaborate paper on the writings of the German 
novelist Hoffman. This article, it is proper to observe, was a 
benefaction to Mr. Gillies, whose pecuniary affairs rendered 
such assistance very desirable. Scott's generosity in this mat- 
ter — for it was exactly giving a poor brother author L.100 at 
the expense of considerable time and drudgery to himself — I 
think it necessary to mention ; the date of the exertion requires 
it of me. But such, in fact, had been in numberless instances 
his method of serving literary persons who had little or no 
claim on him, except that they were of that class. I have not 
conceived it delicate to specify many things of this kind ; but 
I am at liberty to state, that when he wrote his first article for 
the Encyclopaedia Supplement, and the editor of that work, Mr. 
Macvey Napier (a Whig in politics, and with whom he had 
hardly any personal acquaintance), brought him L.100 as his 
remuneration, Sir Walter said — " Now tell me frankly, if I 
don't take this money, does it go into your pocket or your pub- 
lisher's ? for it is impossible for me to accept a penny of it 
from a literary brother." Mr. Napier assured him that the 
arrangements of the work were such, that the editor had noth- 
ing to do with the fund destined for contributions. Scott then 
pocketed his due, with the observation, that " he had trees to 
plant, and no conscience as to the purse of his fat friend " — 
to wit, Constable. 

At this period, the Edinburgh Diary very seldom mentions 
anything that could be called a dinner-party. Skene he often 
styles "his good Samaritan: " he was now the usual companion 
of whatever walks he was willing or able to indulge in. He 
and his daughter partook generally once in every week the 
family meal of Mr. and Mrs. Skene; and they did the like 
occasionally with a few other old friends, chiefly those of the 



506 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Clerk's table. When, an exception occurs, it is easy to see that 
the scene of social gaiety was doubly grateful from its rarity. 
Thus one entry, referring to a party at Mr. J. A. Murray's, 1 
says — "met Jeffrey, Cockburn, Rutherfurd, and others of 
that file. Very pleasant — capital good cheer and excellent 
wine — much laugh and fun. I do not know how it is, but 
when I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day 
is often merrier than when with our own set. Is it because 
they are cleverer ? Jeffrey and Harry Cockburn are to be 
sure very extraordinary men ; yet it is not owing to that en- 
tirely. I believe both parties meet with the feeling of some- 
thing like novelty — we have not worn out our jests in daily 
contact. There is also a disposition on such occasions to be 
courteous, and of course to be pleased." Another evening, 
spent in Rose Court, seems to have given him especial delight. 
He says — "I wrote hard till dressing time, when I went to 
Will Clerk's to dinner. As a bachelor, and keeping a small 
establishment, he does not do these things often, but they are 
proportionally pleasant when they come round. He had trusted 
Sir Adam to bespeak his dinner, who did it con amove, so we 
had excellent cheer, and the wines were various and capital. 
As I before hinted, it is not every day that M'Nab mounts on 
horseback, 2 and so our landlord had a little of that solicitude 
that the party should go off well, which is very flattering to 
the guests. We had a very pleasant evening. The Chief- 
Commissioner was there, Admiral Adam, J. A. Murray, Tom 
Thomson, &c. &c, — Sir Adam predominating at the head, and 
dancing what he calls his merry-andrada in great style. In 
short, we really laughed, and real laughter is a thing as rare 
as real tears. I must say, too, there was a heart — a kindly 
feeling prevailed over the party. Can London give such a 
dinner ? — it may, but I never saw one — they are too cold and 

critical to be easily pleased. 1 hope the Bannatyne Club 

will be really useful and creditable. Thomson is superintend- 
ing a capital edition of Sir James Melville's Memoirs. It is 
brave to see how he wags his Scots tongue, and what a differ- 
ence there is in the form and firmness of the language, com- 
pared to the mincing English edition in which he has hitherto 
been alone known." 

1 He became Lord Advocate, and afterwards a Judge of the Court of 
Session, by the title of Lord Murray. 

2 That singular personage, the late M'Nab of that ilk, spent his life 
almost entirely in a district where a boat was the usual conveyance. I 
suspect, however, that there is an allusion to some particular anecdote 
which I have not recovered. 



DINNER PARTIES. 507 

No wonder that it should be a sweet relief from Buonaparte 
and Blucher to see M'Nab on horseback, and Sir Adam Fer- 
gusson in his merry-andrada exaltation, and laugh over old 
Scotch stories with the Chief-Commissioner, and hear Mr. 
Thomas Thomson report progress as to the doings of the 
Bannatyne Club. But I apprehend every reader will see that 
Sir Walter was misled by his own modesty, when he doubted 
whether London could afford symposia of the same sort. He 
forgets that he had never mixed in the society of London 
except in the capacity of a stranger, a rare visitor, the un- 
rivalled literary marvel of the time, and that every party at 
which he dined was got up expressly on his account, and con- 
stituted, whoever might be the landlord, on the natural prin- 
ciple of bringing together as many as the table could hold — 
to see and hear Sir Walter Scott. Hence, if he dined with a 
Minister of State, he was likely to find himself seated with 
half the Cabinet — if with a Bishop, half the Bench had been 
collected. As a matter of course, every man was anxious to 
gratify on so rare an occasion, as many as he could of those 
who, in case they were uninvited, would be likely to reproach 
him for the omission. The result was a crowding together of 
too many rival eminences ; and he very seldom, indeed, wit- 
nessed the delightful result so constantly produced in London 
by the intermingling of distinguished persons of various classes, 
full of facts and views new to each other — and neither chilled 
nor perplexed by the pernicious and degrading trickery of 
lionising. But besides, it was unfair to institute any com- 
parison between the society of comparative strangers and that 
of old friends dear from boyhood. He could not have his 
Clerks and Fergussons both in Edinburgh and in London. 
Enough, however, of commentary on a very plain text. 

That season was further enlivened by one public dinner, 
and this, though very briefly noticed in Scott's Diary, occupied 
a large space in public attention at the time, and, I believe I 
may add, several columns in every newspaper in Europe. His 
good friend William Murray, manager of the Edinburgh Thea- 
tre, invited him to preside at the first festival of a charitable 
fund for decayed performers. He agreed, and on Friday the 
23d February took the chair, being supported by the Earl of 
Fife, Lord Meadowbank, Sir John Hope of Pinkie, Admiral 
Adam, Robert Dundas of Arniston, Peter Robertson, and many 
other personal friends. Lord Meadowbank had come on short 
notice, and was asked abruptly on his arrival to take a toast 
which had been destined for a noble person who had not been 



508 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

able to appear. He knew that this was the first public dinner 
at which the object of the toast had appeared since his mis- 
fortunes, and taking him aside in the anteroom, asked him 
whether he would now consider it indelicate to hazard a dis- 
tinct reference to the parentage of the Waverley Novels. Sir 
Walter smiled, and said, "Do just as you like — only don't 
say much about so old a story." — In the course of the even- 
ing the Judge rose accordingly, and said — 

" I would beg leave to propose a toast — the health of one of the Pa- 
trons. The clouds have been dispelled — the darkness visible has been 
cleared away — and the Great Unknown — the minstrel of our native 
land — the mighty magician who has rolled back the current of time, 
and conjured up before our living senses the men and the manners of 
days which have long passed away, stands revealed to the eyes and the 
hearts of his affectionate and admiring countrymen. We owe to him, 
as a people, a large and heavy debt of gratitude. He it is who has opened 
to foreigners the grand and characteristic beauties of our country ; — it is 
to him that we owe that our gallant ancestors and illustrious patriots have 
obtained a fame no longer confined to the boundaries of a remote and 
comparatively obscure country — he it is who has conferred a new reputa- 
tion on our national character, and bestowed on Scotland an imperishable 
name, were it only by her having given birth to himself. I propose the 
health of Sir Walter Scott." 

Long before Lord Meadowbank ceased speaking, the company 
had got upon chairs and tables, and the storm of applause that 
ensued was deafening. When they recovered from the first 
fever, Sir Walter spoke as follows : — 

" I certainly did not think, in coming here to-day, that I should have 
the task of acknowledging before 300 gentlemen, a secret which, consid- 
ering that it was communicated to more than twenty people, has been 
remarkably well kept. I am now at the bar of my country, and may be 
understood to be on trial before Lord Meadowbank as an offender ; and 
so quietly did all who were airt and pairt conduct themselves, that I am 
sure that, were the panel now to stand on his defence, every impartial 
jury would bring in a verdict of Not Proven. I am willing, however, to 
plead guilty — nor shall I detain the Court by a long explanation why my 
confession has been so long deferred. Perhaps caprice might have a con- 
siderable share in the matter. I have now to say, however, that the merits 
of these works, if they had any, and their faults, are all entirely imput- 
able to myself. Like another Scottish criminal of more consequence, one 
Macbeth, 

' I am afraid to think what I have done ; 
Look on't again I dare not.' — 

— I have thus far unbosomed myself, and I know that my confession will 
be reported to the public. I mean, then, seriously to state, that when I 
say I am the author, I mean the total and undivided author. With the 



DINNER PARTIES. 509 

exception of quotations, there is not a single word that was not derived 
from myself, or suggested in the course of my reading. The wand is now 
broken, and the book buried. You will allow me further to say, with 
Prospero, it is your breath that has filled my sails, and to crave one single 
toast in the capacity of the author of these novels. I would fain dedicate 
a bumper to the health of one who has represented several of those char- 
acters, of which I had endeavoured to give the skeleton, with a truth and 
liveliness for which I may well be grateful. I beg leave to propose the 
health of my friend Bailie Nicol Jarvie — and I am sure, that when the 
author of TVaverley and Rob Roy drinks to Nieol Jarvie, it will be re- 
ceived with the just applause to which that gentleman has always been 
accustomed, — nay, that you will take care that on the present occasion 
it shall be pro — di — gi — ocs ! " (Long and vehement applause.) 

Mr. Mackat. — " My conscience ! My worthy father the deacon could 
never have believed that his son would hae sic a compliment paid to him 
by the Great Unknown ! " 

Sir Walter Scott. — " The Small Known now, Mr. Bailie ! " 

The reader may, perhaps, expect that I should endeavour 
to name the " upwards of twenty persons " whom Sir Walter 
alluded to on this occasion as having been put into the secret 
of the Waverley Novels, previously, and without reference, to 
the catastrophe of 1826. I am by no means sure that I can 
give the complete list : but in addition to immediate members 
of the author's own family — (including his mother and his 
brother Thomas) — there were Constable, Cadell, the two Bal- 
lantynes — two persons employed in the printing-office, namely, 
Daniel M'Corkindale and Daniel Eobertson — Mr. Terry, Mr. 
Laidlaw, Mr. Train, and Mr. G-. H. Gordon — Charles Duke of 
Buccleuch, Lady Louisa Stuart, Lord Montagu, Lord and Lady 
Polwarth, Lord Kinnedder, Sir Adam Fergusson, Mr. Morritt, 
Mr. and Mrs. Skene, Mr. William Clerk, Mr. Eose, Mr. Hay 
Donaldson, Mr. Thomas Shortreed, Mr. John Eichardson, and 
Mr. Thomas Moore. 

We now reach the completion of that severe task — the Life 
of Napoleon: and following instantly, the commencement of 
the charming Tales of a Grandfather. 

"Diary. — June 5. — Proofs. Parliament-House till two. 
Commenced the character of Buonaparte. To-morrow being a 
Teind-day, I may hope to get it finished. — June 10. — Eose 
with the odd consciousness of being free of my daily task. I 
have heard that the fish-women go to church of a Sunday 
with their creels new washed, and a few stones in them for 
ballast, just because they cannot walk steadily without their 
usual load. I feel something like them, and rather inclined to 
take up some light task, than to be altogether idle. I have my 
proof-sheets, to be sure ; but what are these to a whole day ? 



510 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

A good thought came in my head to write Stories for little 
Johnnie Lockhart, from the History of Scotland, like those 
taken from the History of England. But I will not write 
mine quite so simply as Croker has done. 1 I am persuaded 
both children and the lower class of readers hate books which 
are written down to their capacity, and love those that are 
composed more for their elders and betters. I will make, if 
possible, a book that a child shall understand, yet a man will 
feel some temptation to peruse should he chance to take it 
up. It will require, however, a simplicity of style not quite 
my own. The grand and interesting consists in ideas, not in 
words. A clever thing of this kind might have a race." 

I received, some years ago, from a very modest and intelli- 
gent young man, the late Mr. Robert Hogg (a nephew of the 
Ettrick Shepherd), employed in 1827 as a reader in Ballan- 
tyne's printing-office, a letter from which I must give an extract : 
— " Having been for a few days employed by Sir Walter Scott, 
when he was finishing his Life of Buonaparte, to copy papers 
connected with that work, and to write occasionally to his 
dictation, it may perhaps be in my power to mention some cir- 
cumstances relative to Sir Walter's habits of composition, 
which could not fall under the observation of any one except a 
person in the same situation with myself. When I waited 
upon him to be informed of the business in which he needed 
my assistance, he asked me to attend him the next morning at 
six o'clock. I was punctual, and found Sir Walter already 
busy writing. He appointed my tasks, and again sat down at 
his own desk. We continued to write during the regular work 
hours till six o'clock in the evening, without interruption, 
except to take breakfast and dinner, which were served in the 
room beside us, so that no time was lost. I had no notion it 
was possible for any man to undergo the fatigue of composition 
for so long a time at once, and Sir Walter acknowledged he- 
did not usually subject himself to so much exertion, though it 
seemed to be only the manual part of the operation that occa- 
sioned him any inconvenience. Once or twice he desired me 

1 The following note accompanied a copy of the First Series of the Tales 
of a Grandfather : — 

" To the Right Hon. J. W. Croker. 

"My Dear Croker, — I have been stealing from you, and as it seems 
the fashion to compound felony, I send you a sample of the swag, by way 
of stopping your mouth. . . . Always yours, 

"W.Scott." 



THE LIFE OF BUONAPARTE. 511 

to relieve him, and dictated while I wrote. I have performed 
the same service to several other persons, most of whom 
walked up and down the apartment while excogitating what 
was to be committed to writing; they sometimes stopt, too, 
and, like those who fail in a leap and return upon their course 
to take the advantage of another race, endeavoured to hit 
upon something additional by perusing over my shoulder what 
was already set down, — mending a phrase, perhaps, or recast- 
ing a sentence, till they should recover their wind. None of 
these aids were necessary to Sir Walter : his thoughts flowed 
easily and felicitously, without any difficulty to lay hold of 
them, or to find appropriate language ; which was evident by 
the absence of all solicitude (miseria cogitandi) from his coun- 
tenance. He sat in his chair, from which he rose now and then, 
took a volume from the book-case, consulted it, and restored it 
to the shelf — all without intermission in the current of ideas, 
which continued to be delivered with no less readiness than if 
his mind had been wholly occupied with the words he was 
uttering. It soon became apparent to me, however, that he 
was carrying on two distinct trains of thought, one of which 
was already arranged, and in the act of being spoken, while at 
the same time he was in advance considering what was after- 
wards to be said. This I discovered by his sometimes intro- 
ducing a word which was wholly out of place — entertained 
instead of denied, for example, — but which I presently found 
to belong to the next sentence, perhaps four or five lines 
farther on, which he had been preparing at the very moment 
that he gave me the words of the one that preceded it. Ex- 
temporaneous orators of course, and no doubt many writers, 
think as rapidly as was done by Sir Walter ; but the mind is 
wholly occupied with what the lips are uttering or the pen is 
tracing. I do not remember any other instance in which it 
could be said that two threads were kept hold of at once — 
connected with each other indeed, but grasped at different 
points." 

The Life of Buonaparte, then, was at last published about 
the middle of June 1827. Two years had elapsed since Scott 
began it ; but, by a careful comparison of dates, I have arrived 
at the conclusion that, his expeditions to Ireland and Paris, 
and the composition of novels and critical miscellanies, being 
duly allowed for, the historical task occupied hardly more than 
twelve months. The book was closely printed ; in fact, if it 
had been printed on the original model of his novels, the Life 
of Buonaparte would have filled from thirteen to fourteen vol- 



512 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

umes : the work of one twelvemonth — clone in the midst of 
pain, sorrow, and ruin. 

The general curiosity with which it was expected, and the 
satisfaction with which high and candid minds pernsed it, can- 
not be better described than in the words of the anthor's most 
illustrious literary contemporary. 

"Walter Scott," says Goethe, "passed Ms childhood among the stir- 
ring scenes of the American War, and was a youth of seventeen or eighteen 
when the French E evolution broke out. Now well advanced in the fifties, 
having all along been favourably placed for observation, he proposes to 
lay before us his views and recollections of the important events through 
which he has lived. The richest, the easiest, the most celebrated narrator 
of the century, undertakes to write the history of his own time. 

" What expectations the announcement of such a work must have ex- 
cited in me, will be understood by any one who remembers that I, twenty 
years older than Scott, conversed with Paoli in the twentieth year of my 
age, and with Xapoleon himself in the sixtieth. 

" Through that long series of years, coming more or less into contact 
with the great doings of the world, I failed not to think seriously on what 
was passing around me, and, after my own fashion, to connect so many 
extraordinary mutations into something like arrangement and interde- 
pendence. 

" What could now be more delightful to me, than leisurely and calmly 
to sit down and listen to the discourse of such a man, while clearly, truly, 
and with all the skill of a great artist, he recalls to me the incidents on 
which through life I have meditated, and the influence of which is still 
daily in operation ? " — Kunst und Altherthum. 

The lofty impartiality with which Scott treats the personal 
character of Buonaparte, was of course sure to make all ultra- 
politicians both at home and abroad condemn his representa- 
tion; and an equally general and better founded exception 
was taken to the lavish imagery of his historical style. He 
despised the former clamour — to the latter he bowed submis- 
sive. He could not, whatever character he might wish to as- 
sume, cease to be one of the greatest of poets. Metaphorical 
illustrations, which men born with prose in their souls hunt 
for painfully, and find only to murder, were to him the natural 
and necessary offspring and playthings of ever-teeming fancy. 
He could not write a note to his printer — he could not speak 
to himself in his Diary — without introducing them. Few will 
say that his historical style is, on the whole, excellent — none 
that it is perfect ; but it is completely unaffected, and therefore 
excites nothing of the unpleasant feeling with which we con- 
sider the elaborate artifices of a far greater historian — the 
greatest that our literature can boast — Gibbon. The rapidity 
of the execution infers many inaccuracies as to minor matters 



. THE LIFE OF BUONAPARTE. 513 

of fact ; but it is nevertheless true that no inaccuracy affecting 
the character of the book as a fair record of great events, has 
to this hour been detected by the malevolent ingenuity of 
Jacobin or Buonapartist. Even the most hostile examiners 
were obliged to acknowledge that the gigantic career of their 
idol had been traced, in its leading features, with wonderful 
truth and spirit. No civilian, it was universally admitted, had 
ever before described modern battles and campaigns with any 
approach to his daring and comprehensive felicity. The pub- 
lic, ever unwilling to concede a new species of honour to a name 
already covered with distinction, listened eagerly for a while to 
the indignant reclamations of nobodies, whose share in mighty 
transactions had been omitted, or slightly misrepresented ; but, 
ere long, all these pompous rectifications were summed up — 
and found to constitute nothing but a contemptible monument 
of self-deluding vanity. The work, devoured at first with 
breathless delight, had a shade thrown over it for a time by 
the pertinacious blustering of these angry Lilliputians ; but it 
has now emerged, slowly and surely, from the mist of suspicion 
— and few, whose opinions deserve much attention, hesitate 
to avow their conviction that, whoever may be the Polybius 
of the modern Hannibal, posterity will recognise his Livy in 
Scott. 

Woodstock, as we have seen, placed upwards of L.8000 in 
the hands of Sir Walter's creditors. The Napoleon (first and 
second editions) produced for them a sum which it even now 
startles me to mention, — L.18,000. As by the time the his- 
torical work was published, nearly half of the First Series of 
Chronicles of the Canongate had been written, it is obvious 
that the amount to which Scott's literary industry, from the 
close of 1825, to the 10th of June 1827, had diminished his 
debt, cannot be stated at less than L. 28,000. Had health 
been spared him, how soon must he have freed himself from 
all his encumbrances ! 

2 L 



CHAPTER XV. 

Death of Constable — Controversy with Gourgaud — Excursion to Dur- 
ham — Publication of the Chronicles of the Canongate and Tales of a 
Grandfather — Keligious Discourses — Fair Maid of Perth — Anne of 
Geierstein — Threatening of Apoplexy — Death of Thomas Purdie. 
1827-1829. 

My wife and I spent the summer of 1827, partly at a sea- 
bathing place near Edinburgh, and partly in Roxburghshire. 
The arrival of his daughter and her children at Portobello 
was a source of constant refreshment to Scott during June; 
for every other day he came down and dined there, and strolled 
about afterwards on the beach ; thus interrupting, beneficially 
for his health, and I doubt not for the residt of his labours 
also, the new custom of regular night-work, or, as he called it, 
of serving double-tides. When the Court released him, and he 
returned to Abbotsford, his family did what they could to keep 
him to his ancient evening habits ; but nothing was so useful 
as the presence of his invalid grandson. The poor child was 
at this time so far restored as to be able to sit his pony again ; 
and Sir Walter, who had, as the reader has observed, conceived, 
the very day he finished Napoleon, the notion of putting to- 
gether a series of Tales on the history of Scotland, somewhat 
in the manner of Mr. Croker's on that of England, rode daily 
among the woods with his "Hugh. Littlejohn," and told the 
story, and ascertained that it suited the comprehension of boy- 
hood, before he reduced it to writing. Sibyl Grey had been 
dismissed in consequence of the accident at the Catrail ; and 
he had now stooped his pride to a sober, steady creature, of 
very humble blood ; dun, with black mane and legs ; by name 
Douce Davie, alias the Covenanter. This, the last of his steeds, 
by the way, had been previously in the possession of a jolly old 
laird near Peebles, and acquired a distinguished reputation by 
its skill in carrying him home safely when drunk. Douce 
Davie, on such occasions, accommodated himself to the swerv- 
ing balance of his rider with such nice discrimination, that on 
the laird's death the country people expected a vigorous com- 
petition for the sagacious animal ; but the club-companions of 

514 



DEATH OF CONSTABLE. 515 

the defunct stood off to a man when it was understood that 
the Sheriff coveted the succession. 

The Chronicles of the Canongate proceeded pari passu with 
these historical tales ; and both works were published before 
the end of the year. He also superintended, at the same time, 
the first collection of his Prose Miscellanies, in six volumes 
8vo. — several articles being remodelled and extended to adapt 
them for a more permanent sort of existence than had been 
originally thought of. Moreover, he penned that autumn his 
beautiful and instructive Article on the Planting of Waste 
Lands, which is indeed no other than a precious chapter of 
his autobiography. What he wrote of new matter between 
June and December, fills from five to six volumes in the late 
uniform edition of his works ; but all this was light and easy 
after the perilous drudgery of the preceding eighteen months. 

On the 22d of July, his Diary notes the death of Mr. Con- 
stable : — " This might have been a most important thing to 
me if it had happened some years ago, and I should then have 
lamented it much. He has lived to do me some injury; yet, 
excepting the last L.5000, I think most unintentionally. He 
was a prince of booksellers. Constable was a violent tempered 
man with those he dared use freedom with. He was easily 
overawed by people of consequence ; but, as usual, took it out 
of those whom poverty made subservient to him. Yet he was 
generous, and far from bad-hearted : — in person good-looking, 
but very corpulent latterly ; a large feeder, and deep drinker, till 
his health became weak. He died of water in the chest, which 
the natural strength of his constitution set long at defiance. I 
have no great reason to regret him ; yet I do. If he deceived 
me, he also deceived himself." 

Constable's spirit had been effectually broken by his down- 
fall. To stoop from being primus absque secundo among the 
Edinburgh booksellers, to be the occupant of an obscure closet 
of a shop, without capital, without credit, all his mighty under- 
takings abandoned or gone into other hands, except indeed his 
Miscellany, which he had now no resources for pushing on in 
the fashion he once contemplated, — this reverse was too 
much for that proud heart. He no longer opposed a deter- 
mined mind to the ailments of the body, and sunk on the 21st 
of this month, having, as I am told, looked, long ere he took to 
his bed, at least ten years older than he was. He died in his 
54th year; but into that space he had crowded vastly more 
than the usual average of zeal and energy, of hilarity and tri- 
umph, and perhaps of anxiety and misery. 



516 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

Of the 10th of August — when the news of Mr. Canning's 
death reached Abbotsf ord — and the day following, are these 
entries : " The death of the Premier is announced — late George 
Canning — the witty, the accomplished, the ambitious; — he 
who had toiled thirty years, aud involved himself in the most 
harassing discussions, to attain this dizzy height ; he who had 
held it for three months of intrigue and obloquy — and now a 
heap of dust, and that is all. — No man possessed a gayer and 
more playful wit in society ; no one, since Pitt's time, had 
more commanding sarcasm in debate ; in the House of Com- 
mons he was the terror of that species of orators called the 
Yelpers. His lash fetched away both skin and flesh, and would 
have penetrated the hide of a rhinoceros. In his conduct as a 
statesman he had a great fault : he lent himself too willingly 
to intrigue. The last composition with the Whigs was a sacri- 
fice of principle on both sides. To me Canning was always 
personally most kind. My nerves have for these two or three 
last days been susceptible of an acute excitement from the 
slightest causes ; the beauty of the evening, the sighing of the 
summer breeze, bring the tears into my eyes not unpleasantly. 
But I must take exercise, and case-harden myself. There is no 
use in encouraging these moods of the mind." 

He received about this time a visit from Mr. J. L. Adolphus ; 
who had not seen him since 1824 — and says : — 

" Calamity had borne heavily upon Sir Walter in the inter- 
val ; but the painful and anxious feeling with which a friend 
is approached for the first time under such circumstances, gave 
way at once to the unassumed serenity of his manner. There 
were some signs of age about him which the mere lapse of time 
would scarcely have accounted for 5 but his spirits were abated 
only, not broken ; if they had sunk, they had sunk equably and 
gently. It was a declining, not a clouded sun. I do not re- 
member any reference to the afflictions he had suffered, except 
once, when, speaking of his Life of Napoleon, he said in a 
quiet but affecting tone, ' I could have done it better, if I could 
have written at more leisure, and with a mind more at ease.' 
One morning a party was made to breakfast at Chief swood ; 
and any one who on that occasion looked at and heard Sir 
Walter Scott, in the midst of his children and grandchildren 
and friends, must have rejoiced to see that life still yielded 
him a store of pleasures, and that his heart was as open to 
their influence as ever. I was much struck by a few words 
which fell from him on this subject a short time afterwards. 
After mentioning an accident which had spoiled the promised 



VISIT OF MR. ABOLPHUS. 517 

pleasure of a visit to his daughter in London, he then added — 
' I have had as much happiness in my time as most men, and I 
must not complain now.' I said, that whatever had been his 
share of happiness, no man could have laboured better for it. 
He answered — 'I consider the capacity to labour as part of 
the happiness I have enjoyed.' 

" A substitute for walking, which he always very cheerfully 
used, and Avhich at last became his only resource for any dis- 
tant excursion, was a ride in a four-wheeled open carriage, 
holding four persons, but not absolutely limited to that number 
on an emergency. Tame as this exercise might be in compari- 
son with riding on horseback, or with walking under propitious 
circumstances, yet as he was rolled along to Melrose, or Bow- 
hill, or Yair, his spirits always freshened; the air, the sounds, 
the familiar yet romantic scenes, wakened up all the poetry of 
his thoughts, and happy were they who heard it resolve itself 
into words. At the sight of certain objects — for example, in 
passing the green foundations of the little chapel of Lindean, 
where the body of the ' Dark Knight of Liddesdale ' was de- 
posited on its way to Melrose, — it would, I suppose, have 
been impossible for him, unless with a companion hopelessly 
unsusceptible or preoccupied, to forbear some passing com- 
ment, some harping (if the word may be favourably used) on 
the tradition of the place. This was, perhaps, what he called 
1 bestowing his tediousness ; ' but if any one could think these 
effusions tedious because they often broke forth, such a man 
might have objected against the rushing of the Tweed, or the 
stirring of the trees in the wind, or any other natural melody, 
that he had heard the same thing before. 

" Some days of my visit were marked by an almost perpet- 
ual confinement to the house ; the rain being incessant. But 
the evenings were as bright and cheerful as the atmosphere of 
the days was dreary. Not that the gloomiest morning could 
ever be wearisome where, independently of the resources in 
society which the house afforded, the visitor might ransack a 
library, unique, I suppose, in some of its collections, and in all 
its departments interesting and characteristic of the founder. 
So many of the volumes were enriched with anecdotes or com- 
ments in his own hand, that to look over his books was in some 
degree conversing with him. And sometimes this occupation 
was pleasantly interrupted by a snatch of actual conversation 
with himself, when he entered from his own room to consult 
or take away a book. How often have I heard with pleasure, 
after a long silence, the uneven step, the point of the stick 



518 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

striking against the floor, and then seen the poet himself 
emerge from his study, with a face of thought but yet of 
cheerfulness, followed perhaps by Mmrod, who stretched his 
limbs and yawned, as if tired out with some abstruse investi- 
gation. 

" On one of the rainy days I have alluded to, when walking 
at the usual hour became hopeless, Sir Walter asked me to 
sit with him while he continued his morning occupation, giving 
me for my own employment the publications of the Bannatyne 
Club. His study, as I recollect it, was strictly a work-room, 
though an elegant one. It has been fancifully decked out in 
pictures, but it had, I think, very few articles of mere orna- 
ment. The chief of these was the print of Stothard's Canter- 
bury Pilgrims, which hung over the chimney-piece, and from 
the place assigned to it must have been in great favour, though 
Sir Walter made the characteristic criticism upon it that, if 
the procession were to move, the young Squire who is prancing 
in the foreground would in another minute be over his horse's 
head. The shelves were stored with serviceable books; one 
door opened into the great library, and a hanging-stair within 
the room itself communicated with his bedroom. It would 
have been a good lesson to a desultory student, or even to a 
moderately active amanuensis, to see the unintermitted energy 
with which Sir Walter Scott applied himself to his work. I 
conjectured that he was at this time writing the Tales of a 
Grandfather. When we had sat down to our respective em- 
ployments, the stillness of the room was unbroken, except by 
the light rattle of the rain against the windows, and the dash- 
ing trot of Sir Walter's pen over his paper ; sounds not very 
unlike each other, and which seemed to vie together in rapidity 
and continuance. Sometimes, when he stopped to consult a 
book, a short dialogue would take place upon the subjects with 
which I was occupied — about Mary Queen of Scots, perhaps, 
or Viscount Dundee; or, again, the silence might be broken 
for a moment by some merry outcry in the hall, from one of 
the little grandchildren, which would half waken Kimrod, or 
Bran, or Spice, as they slept at Sir Walter's feet, and produce 
a growl or a stifled bark — not in anger, but by way of protest. 
For matters like these, work did not proceed the worse, nor, 
as it seemed to me, did Sir Walter feel at all discomposed by 
such interruptions as a message or the entrance of a visitor. 
One door of his study opened into the hall, and there did not 
appear to be any understanding that he should not be dis- 
turbed. At the end of our morning we attempted a sortie, but 



CONTROVERSY WITH GOURGAUD. 519 

had made only a little way in the shrubbery -walks overlooking 
the Tweed, when the rain drove ns back. The river, swollen 
and discoloured, swept by majestically, and the sight drew 
from Sir Walter his favourite lines — 

' I've seen Tweed's silver streams, glittering in the sunny beams, 
Turn drumly and dark, as they rolled on their way.' 

There could not have been a better moment for appreciating 
the imagery of the last line. I think it was in this short walk 
that he mentioned to me, with great satisfaction, the favourable 
prospects of his literary industry, and spoke sanguinely of 
retrieving his losses with the booksellers." 

Towards the end of August, Sir Walter's Diary has a good 
deal about an affair which, however, annoyed his family much 
more than himself. Among the documents laid before him in 
the Colonial Office, when he visited London at the close of 
1826, were some which represented one of Buonaparte's attend- 
ants at St. Helena, General Gourgaud, as having been guilty 
of gross unfairness, giving the English Government private 
information that the Emperor's complaints of ill-usage were 
utterly unfounded, and yet then, and afterwards, aiding and 
assisting the delusion in France as to the harshness of Sir 
Hudson Lowe's conduct towards his captive. Sir Walter, when 
using these remarkable documents, guessed that Gourgaud 
might be inclined to fix a personal quarrel on himself; and 
there now appeared in the newspapers a succession of hints 
that the General was seriously bent on this purpose. He 
applied, as Colonel Grogg would have done forty years before, 
to The Baronet. — He writes to William Clerk on the 27th : — 
" I am about to claim an especial service from you in the name 
of our long and intimate friendship. I understand that Gen- 
eral Gourgaud has, or is about to set out for London, to verify 
the facts averred concerning him in my history of Napoleon. 
Now, in case of a personal appeal to me, I have to say that 
his confessions to Baron Sturmer, Count Balmain, and others 
at St. Helena — confirmed by him in various recorded conversa- 
tions with Mr. Goulburn, then Under-Secretary of State — were 
documents of a historical nature which I found with others in 
the Colonial Office, and was therefore perfectly entitled to use. 
If his language has been misrepresented, he has certainly been 
very unfortunate ; for it has been misrepresented by four or 
five different people to whom he said the same things — true 
or false, he knows best. I also acted with delicacy towards 



520 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

him, leaving out whatever related to his private quarrels with 
Bertrand, &c., so that, in fact, he has no reason to complain 
of me, since it is ridiculous to suppose I was to suppress his- 
torical evidence, furnished by him voluntarily, because his 
present sentiments render it unpleasing for him that those 
which he formerly entertained should be known. Still, like a 
man who finds himself in a scrape, General G-ourgaud may 
wish to fight himself out of it, and if the quarrel should be 
thrust on me — why, I will not baulk him, Jackie. He shall 
not dishonour the country through my sides, I can assure him. 
I have, of course, no wish to bring the thing to such an arbitre- 
ment. Now, in this case, I shall have occasion for a sensible 
and resolute friend, and I naturally look for him in the com- 
panion of my youth, on whose firmness and sagacity I can 
with such perfect confidence rely." 

Clerk was ready for his part : — but the General, if he had 
ever meditated a direct call on Scott, did not persevere. The 
Diary of September 10th says — " Gourgaud's wrath has burst 
forth in a very distant clap of thunder, in which he accuses 
me of contriving, with the Ministry, to slander his rag of a 

reputation. He be d d for a fool, to make his case worse 

by stirring. I shall only revenge myself by publishing the 
whole extracts I made from the records of the Colonial Office, 
in which he will find enough to make him bite his nails." — 
Scott accordingly printed a brief letter, with a crushing appen- 
dix of documents. This produced a blustering rejoinder from 
Gourgaud ; but Scott declined to prolong the paper war, simply 
stating in Ballantyne's print, that " while leaving the question 
to the decision of the British public, he should have as little 
hesitation in referring it to the French nation, provided the 
documents he had produced were allowed to be printed in the 
French newspapers, from which hitherto they had been excluded." 
And he would indeed have been idle had he said more than 
this, for his cause had been taken up on the instant by every 
English journal, of whatever politics ; and The Times thus 
summed up its review of the debate : — 

" Sir Walter Scott did that which would have occurred to every honest 
man, whose fair-dealing had violent imputations cast upon it. He pro- 
duced his authorities. In the General's reply there is enough, even to 
satiety, of declamation against the English Government, — of subterfuge 
and equivocation with regard to the words on record against himself, — 
and of gross abuse and Billingsgate against the historian who has plac- 
arded him ; but of direct and successful negative there is not one syllable. 
The Aide-de-camp of St. Helena shews himself to be nothing better than 
a cross between a blusterer and a sophist." 



EXCURSION TO DURHAM. 521 

Before G-ourgaud fell quite asleep, Sir Walter received an 
invitation from Lord and Lady Ravensworth to meet the Duke 
of Wellington at their castle near Durham. The Duke was 
then making a progress in the north of England, to which 
additional importance was given by the condition of politics ; 
— the chance of Lord Goderich's being able to maintain him- 
self as Canning's successor seeming very precarious — and the 
opinion that his Grace must soon be called to the helm of State 
gaining ground every day. Sir Walter, who felt for the Great 
Captain the pure and exalted devotion that might have been 
expected from some honoured soldier of his banners, accepted 
this invitation, and witnessed a scene of enthusiasm with which 
its principal object could hardly have been more gratified than 
he was. The most remarkable feature was a grand dinner in 
the Episcopal Castle at Durham — that See being as yet un- 
shorn of its Palatine magnificence. "On the 3d October,' 7 
says his Diary, "we dined about one hundred and forty or 
fifty men — a distinguished company — 

1 Lords and Dukes and noble Princes, 
All the pride and flower of Spain. ' 

We dined in the old baronial hall, impressive from its rude 
antiquity, and fortunately free from the plaster of former im- 
provement, as I trust it will long be from the gingerbread taste 
of modern Gothicisers. The bright moon streaming in through 
the old Gothic windows contrasted strangely with the artificial 
lights within; spears, banners, and armour were intermixed 
with the pictures of old bishops, and the whole had a singular 
mixture of baronial pomp with the grave and more chastened 
dignity of prelacy. The conduct of our reverend entertainer 
suited the character remarkably well. Amid the welcome of 
a Count Palatine he did not for an instant forget the gravity 
of the Church dignitary. All his toasts were gracefully given, 
and his little speeches well made, and the more affecting that 
the failing voice sometimes reminded us that our host laboured 
under the infirmities of advanced life." I was favoured at 
the time with a letter from Dr. Philpotts (now Bishop of 
Exeter) who said — "I never saw curiosity and enthusiasm so 
highly excited, and I may add, as to a great part of the com- 
pany, so nearly balanced. Sometimes I doubted whether the 
hero or the poet was fixing most attention — the latter, I need 
hardly tell you, appeared unconscious that he was regarded 
differently from the others about him, until the good Bishop 



522 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

rose and proposed his health." Another friend, the Honour- 
able Henry Liddell, says — "Bishop Van Mildert gave his 
health with peculiar felicity, remarking that he could reflect 
upon the labours of a long literary life, with the consciousness 
that everything he had Avritten tended to the practice of virtue, 
and to the improvement of the human race. Sir Walter replied, 
' that hereafter he should always reflect with great pride upon 
that moment of his existence, when his health had been given 
in such terms, by the Bishop of Durham in his own baronial 
hall, surrounded and supported by the assembled aristocracy 
of the two northern counties, and in the presence of the Duke of 
Wellington.' " 

On the 8th Sir Walter reached Abbotsford, and forthwith 
resumed his Grandfather's Tales, which he composed through- 
out with the ease and heartiness reflected in this entry : — 
" This morning was damp, dripping, and unpleasant ; so I even 
made a work of necessity, and set to the Tales like a dragon. 
I murdered Maclellan of Bomby at the Thrieve Castle ; stabbed 
the Black Douglas in the town of Stirling; astonished King 
James before Roxburgh; and stifled the Earl of Mar in his 
bath in the Canongate. A wild world, my masters, this Scot- 
land of ours must have been. No fear of want of interest ; no 
lassitude in those days for want of work — 

' For treason, d'ye see, 
"Was to them a dish of tea, 

And murder bread and butter.' " 

Such was his life in Autumn 1827. Before I leave the 
period, I must note how greatly T admired the manner in 
which all his dependents appeared to have met the reverse 
of his fortunes — a reverse which inferred very considerable 
alteration in the circumstances of every one of them. The 
butler, Dalgliesh, had been told when the distress came, that 
a servant of his class would no longer be required — but the 
man burst into tears, and said, rather than go he would stay 
without any wages: So he remained — and instead of being 
the easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half 
the work of the house, at probably half his former salary. 
Old Peter, who had been for five-and-twenty years a dignified 
coachman, was now ploughman in ordinary, only putting his 
horses to the carriage upon high and rare occasions ; and so 
on with all the rest that remained of the ancient train. And 
all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever done 



DEVOTION OF SCOTT'S SERVANTS. 523 

before. Their good conduct had given every one of them a 
new elevation in his own mind — and yet their demeanour had 
gained, in place of losing, in simple humility of observance. 
The great loss was that of William Laidlaw, for whom (the 
estate being all but a fragment in the hands of the trustees 
and their agent) there was now no occupation here. The 
cottage, which his taste had converted into a loveable retreat, 
had found a rent-paying tenant; and he was living a dozen 
miles off on the farm of a relation in the Yale of Yarrow. 
Every week, however, he came down to have a ramble with 
Sir Walter over their old haunts — to hear how the pecuniary 
atmosphere was darkening or brightening; and to read in 
every face at Abbotsford, that it could never be itself again 
until circumstances should permit his re-establishment at 
Kaeside. 

All this warm and respectful solicitude must have had a 
salutary influence on the mind of Scott, who may be said to 
have lived upon love. No man cared less about popular 
admiration and applause ; but for the least chill on the affec- 
tion of any near and dear to him he had the sensitiveness of a 
maiden. I cannot forget, in particular, how his eyes sparkled 
when he first pointed out to me Peter Mathieson guiding the 
plough on the haugh : " Egad," said he, " auld Pepe " (this was 
the children's name for their good friend) — " auld Pepe's 
whistling at his darg. The honest fellow said, a yoking in 
a deep field would do baith him and the blackies good. If 
things get round with me, easy shall be Pepe's cushion.' 7 In 
general, during that autumn, I thought Sir Walter enjoyed 
much his usual spirits ; and often, no doubt, he did so. His 
Diary, however, shews (what perhaps many of his intimates 
doubted during his lifetime) that, in spite of the dignified 
equanimity which characterised all his conversation with man- 
kind, he had his full share of the delicate sensibilities, the 
mysterious ups and downs, the wayward melancholy, and 
fantastic sunbeams of the poetical temperament. It is only 
with imaginative minds, in truth, that sorrows of the spirit 
are enduring. Those he had encountered were veiled from 
the eye of the world, but they lasted with his life. 

The first series of Chronicles of the Canongate — (which 
title supplanted that of The Canongate Miscellany, or Tradi- 
tions of the Sanctuary) — was published early in the winter. 
The contents were, the Highland Widow, the Two Drovers, 
and the Surgeon's Daughter — all in their styles excellent, 
except that the Indian part of the last does not well harmonise 



524 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

with the rest; arid certain preliminary chapters which were 
generally considered as still better than the stories they intro- 
duce. The portraiture of Mrs. Murray Keith, under the name 
of Mrs. Bethune Baliol, and that of Chrystal Croftangry 
throughout, appear to me unsurpassed in Scott's writings. In 
the former, I am assured he has mixed up various features of 
his own beloved mother ; and in the latter, there can be no 
doubt that a good deal was taken from nobody but himself. 
In fact, the choice of the hero's residence, the original title of 
the book, and a world of minor circumstances, were suggested 
by painful circumstances recorded in his Diary of 1827. He 
had, while toiling his life out for his creditors, received vari- 
ous threatenings of severe treatment from the London Jews 
formerly alluded to, Messrs. Abud and Co. ; and, on at least 
one occasion, he made every preparation for taking shelter in 
the Sanctuary of Holyroodhouse. Although these people were 
well aware that at Christmas 1827 a very large dividend would 
be paid on the Ballantyne debt, they could not bring them- 
selves to comprehend that their interest lay in allowing Scott 
the free use of his time ; that by thwarting and harassing him 
personally, nothing was likely to be achieved but the throwing 
up of the trust, and the settlement of the io solvent house's 
affairs on the usual terms of a sequestration. The Jews would 
understand nothing, but that the very unanimity of the other 
creditors as to the propriety of being gentle with him, ren- 
dered it extremely probable that their own harshness might 
be rewarded by immediate payment of their whole demand. 
They fancied that the trustees would clear off any one debt, 
rather than disturb the arrangements generally adopted ; they 
fancied that, in case they laid Sir Walter Scott in prison, there 
would be some extraordinary burst of feeling in Edinburgh — 
that private friends would interfere ; — in short, that in one 
way or another, they should get hold, without farther delay, 
of their " pound of flesh." — Two paragraphs from the Diary 
will be enough as to this unpleasant subject : — 

" October 31. — Just as I was merrily cutting away among 
my trees, arrives Mr. Gibson with a very melancholy look, and 
indeed the news he brought was shocking enough. It seems 
Mr. Abud has given positive orders to take out diligence 
against me for his debt. This breaks all the measures we had 
resolved on, and prevents the dividend from taking place, by 
which many poor persons will be great sufferers. For me — 
the alternative will be more painful to my feelings than prej- 
udicial to my interests. To submit to a sequestration, and 



THREATS OF ABUD & CO. 525 

allow the creditors to take what they can get, will be the 
inevitable consequence. This will cut short my labour by 
several years, which I might spend, and spend in vain, in 
endeavouring to meet their demands. I suppose that I, -the 
Chronicler of the Canongate, will have to take up my residence 
in the Sanctuary, unless I prefer the more airy residence of 
the Calton Jail, or a trip to the Isle of Man. November 4. — 
Put my papers in some order, and prepared for the journey. 
It is in the style of the Emperors of Abyssinia, who proclaim, 
' Cut down the Kantuffa in the four quarters of the world, for 
I know not where I am going.' Yet, were it not for poor 
Anne's doleful looks, I would feel firm as a piece of granite. 
Even the poor dogs seem to fawn on me with anxious meaning, 
as if there were something going on they could not compre- 
hend. Set off at twelve, firmly resolved in body and mind. 
But when I arrived in Edinburgh at my faithful friend Mr. 
Gibson's — lo ! the scene had again changed, and a new hare is 
started." 

The " new hare " was this. It transpired in the very nick 
of time, that a suspicion of usury attached to these Israelites 
in a transaction with Hurst & Robinson, as to one or more of 
the bills for which the house of Ballantyne had become respon- 
sible. This suspicion assumed a shape sufficiently tangible to 
justify that house's trustees in carrying the point before the 
Court of Session. Thus, though the Court decided in favour 
of the Abuds, time was gained ; and as soon as the decision 
was pronounced, Scott heard also that the Jews' debt was 
settled. In fact, Sir William Forbes, whose banking-house 
was one of Messrs. Ballantyne's chief creditors, had crowned 
his generous efforts for Scott's relief by privately paying the 
whole of Abud's demand (nearly L.2000) out of his own pocket 
— ranking as an ordinary creditor for the amount ; and taking 
care at the same time that his old friend should be allowed 
to believe that the affair had merged quietly in the general 
measures . of the trustees. It was not until some time after 
Sir William's death, that Sir Walter learned what had been 
done on this occasion ; and I may as well add here, that he 
died in utter ignorance of some services of a like sort which 
he owed to the secret liberality of three of his brethren at the 
Clerk's table — Hector Macdonald Buchanan, Colin Mackenzie, 
and Sir Eobert Dundas. I ought not to omit, that as soon as 
Sir Walter's eldest son heard of the Abud business, he left 
Ireland for Edinburgh ; but before he reached his father, the 
alarm had blown over. 



526 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

This vision of the real Canongate has drawn me away from 
the Chronicles of Mr. Croftangry. The scenery of his patri- 
monial inheritance was sketched from that of Carinichael, the 
ancient and now deserted mansion of the noble family of 
Hyndford; but for his strongly Scottish feelings abont part- 
ing with his land, and stern efforts to suppress them, the 
author had not to go so far afield. Christie Steele's brief 
character of Crof tangry's ancestry, too, appears to snit well all 
that we have on record concerning his own more immediate 
progenitors of the stubborn race of Eaebnrn : — " They werena 
ill to the poor folk, sir, and that is aye something ; they were 
just decent bein bodies. Ony poor creature that had face to 
beg got an awmous, and welcome ; they that were shamefaced 
gaed by, and twice as welcome. But they keepit an honest 
walk before God and man, the Croftangrys ; and as I said 
before, if they did little good, they did as little ill. They 
lifted their rents and spent them ; called in their kain and eat 
them ; gaed to the kirk of a Sunday ; bowed civilly if folk 
took aff their bannets as they gaed by, and lookit as black as 
sin at them that keepit them on." I shall give no offence by 
adding that many things in the character and manners of Mr. 
Gideon Gray of Middlemas, in the Tale of the Surgeon's 
Daughter, were considered at the time by Sir Walter's neigh- 
bours on Tweedside as copied from Dr. Ebenezer Clarkson of 
Selkirk. "He was," says the Chronicler, "of such reputa- 
tion in the medical world, that he had been often advised to 
exchange the village and its meagre circle of practice for 
Edinburgh. There is no creature in Scotland that works 
harder, and is more poorly requited, than the country doctor, 
unless perhaps it may be his horse. Yet the horse is, and 
indeed must be, hardy, active, and indefatigable, in spite of a 
rough coat and indifferent condition; and so you will often 
find in his master, under a blunt exterior, professional skill 
and enthusiasm, intelligence, humanity, courage, and science." 
A true picture — a portrait from the life, of Scott's hard- 
riding, benevolent, and sagacious old friend, " to all the coun- 
try dear." 

These Chronicles were not received with exceeding favour 
at the time ; and Sir Walter was a good deal discouraged. In- 
deed he seems to have been with some difficulty persuaded by 
Cadell and Ballantyne that it would not do for him to " lie 
fallow " as a novelist ; and then, when he in compliance with 
their entreaties began a Second Canongate Series, they were 
both disappointed with his MS., and told him their opinions 



CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE. 527 

so plainly that his good-nature was sharply tried. The Tales 
which they disapproved of, were those of My Aunt Margaret's 
Mirror, and the Laird's Jock ; he consented to lay them aside, 
and began St. Valentine's Eve or the Fair Maid of Perth, which 
from the first pleased his critics. It was in the brief interval 
occasioned by these misgivings and debates, that his ever elas- 
tic mind threw off another charming paper for the Quarterly 
Review — that on Ornamental Gardening, by way of sequel to 
the Essay on Planting Waste Lands. Another fruit of his 
leisure was a sketch of the life of George Bannatyne, the col- 
lector of ancient Scottish poetry, for the Club which bears his 
name. 

He had taken, for that winter, the house No. 6 Shandwick 
Place, which he occupied by the month during the remainder 
of his servitude as a Clerk of Session. Very near this house, 
he was told a few days after he took possession, dwelt the 
aged mother of his first love ; and he expressed to his friend 
Mrs. Skene a wish that she should carry him to renew an ac- 
quaintance which seems to have been interrupted from the 
period of his youthful romance. Mrs. Skene complied with 
his desire, and she tells me that a very painful scene ensued. 
His Diary says : — " November 7. — Began to settle myself this 
morning after the hurry of mind and even of body which I 
have lately undergone. — I went to make a visit, and fairly 
softened myself, like an old fool, with recalling old stories, till 
I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeating verses 
for the whole night. This is sad work. The very grave gives 
up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to my per- 
plexities. I don't care. I begin to grow case-hardened, and, 
like a stag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows 
fierce and dangerous. Yet what a romance to tell ! — and told, 
I fear, it will one day be. And then my three years of dream- 
ing, and my two years of wakening, will be chronicled, doubt- 
less. But the dead will feel no pain. — November 10. — Wrote 
out my task and little more. At twelve o'clock I went again 
to poor Lady Jane to talk over old stories. I am not clear 
that it is a right or healthful indulgence to be ripping up old 
sores, but it seems to give her deep-rooted sorrow words, and 
that is a mental blood-letting. To me these things are now 
matter of calm and solemn recollection, never to be forgotten, 
yet scarce to be remembered with pain." 

A few days afterwards arrived a very agreeable piece of 
intelligence. The King had not forgotten his promise with 
respect to the poet's second son ; and Lord Dudley, then Sec- 



528 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

retary of State for the Foreign Department, was very well dis- 
posed to comply with the royal recommendation. Charles was 
appointed to a clerkship in the Foreign Office ; and his settle- 
ment was rapidly followed by more than one fortunate incident 
in his father's literary and pecuniary history. The first Tales 
of a Grandfather appeared early in December, and their recep- 
tion was more rapturous than that of any one of his works since 
Ivanhoe. He had solved for the first time the problem of nar- 
rating history, so as at once to excite and gratify the curiosity 
of youth, and please and instruct the wisest of mature minds. 
The popularity of the book has grown with every year that has 
since elapsed ; it is equally prized in the library, the boudoir, 
the schoolroom, and the nursery ; it is adopted as the happiest 
of manuals, not only in Scotland, but wherever the English 
tongue is spoken ; nay, it is to be seen in the hands of old and 
young all over the civilised world, and has, I have little doubt, 
extended the knowledge of Scottish history in quarters where 
little or no interest had ever before been awakened as to any 
other parts of that subject, except those immediately connected 
with Mary Stuart and the Chevalier. 

There had been serious doubts, in what proportions the copy- 
right of the Novels, &c. was vested, at the moment of the com- 
mon calamity, in Scott or in Constable. One of the ablest of the 
Scotch Judges, John Irving, Lord Newton, undertook the set- 
tlement of this complicated question, as private arbiter : and 
the result of his ultimate award was, that Scott had lost all 
hold on the copyright of the Novels from Waverley to Quentin 
Durward ; but that Napoleon and Woodstock were wholly his. 
This decision, however, was not to be expected speedily : it had 
now become highly expedient to bring the body of copyrights 
to sale — and it was agreed to do so, the money to be deposited 
in bank until the award was given. This sale (on 19th Decem- 
ber 1827) comprised all the Novels from Waverley to Quentin 
Durward inclusive, besides a majority of the shares of the 
Poetical Works. Mr. Cadell's family and private friends were 
extremely desirous to secure for him part at least of these 
copyrights ; and Sir Walter's were not less so that he should 
seize this last opportunity of recovering a share in the prime 
fruits of his genius. The relations by this time established 
between him and Cadell were those of strict confidence and 
kindness ; and both saw well that the property would be com- 
paratively lost, were it not ensured that thenceforth the whole 
should be managed as one unbroken concern. The result was, 
that the copyrights exposed to sale were purchased, one-half 



SALE OF COPYRIGHTS. 529 

for Sir Walter, the other half for Cadell, at the price of L.8500. 
Well might the "pockpuddings" — for so the Diary styles the 
English booksellers — rue their timidity on this day; but it 
was the most lucky one that ever came for Sir Walter's cred- 
itors. A dividend of six shillings in the pound was paid at this 
Christmas on their whole claims. The result of their high- 
hearted debtor's exertions, between January 1826 and January 
1828, was in all very nearly L.40,000. No literary biographer, 
in all likelihood, will ever have such another fact to record. 
The creditors unanimously passed a vote of thanks for the in- 
defatigable industry which had achieved so much for their 
behoof. 

On returning to Abbotsford at Christmas, after completing 
these transactions, he says in his Diary — " My reflections in 
entering my own gate to-day were of a very different and more 
pleasing cast than those with which I left this place about six 
weeks ago. I was then in doubt whether I should fly my 
country, or become avowedly bankrupt, and surrender up my 
library and household furniture, with the life-rent of my estate, 
to sale. A man of the world will say I had better done so. 
No doubt, had I taken this course at once, I might have em- 
ployed the money I have made since the insolvency of Con- 
stable and Robinson's houses in compounding my debts. But 
I could not have slept sound, as I now can under the comfort- 
able impression of receiving the thanks of my creditors, and 
the conscious feeling of discharging my duty as a man of hon- 
our and honesty. I see before me a long, tedious, and dark 
path, but it leads to stainless reputation. If I die in the har- 
rows, as is very likely, I shall die with honour ; if I achieve 
my task, I shall have the thanks of all concerned, and the 
approbation of my own conscience." 

He now took up in earnest two pieces of work, which prom- 
ised and brought great ultimate advantage ; namely, a complete 
collection of his Poems, with biographical prefaces ; the other, 
an uniform edition of his Novels, each to be introduced by an 
account of the hints on which it had been founded, and illus- 
trated throughout by historical and antiquarian annotations. 
On this last, commonly mentioned in the Diary as the Magnum 
Opus, Sir Walter bestowed pains commensurate with its im- 
portance ; — and in the execution of the very delicate task 
which either scheme imposed, he has certainly displayed such 
a combination of frankness and modesty as entitles him to a 
high place in the short list of graceful autobiographers. True 
dignity is always simple; and perhaps true genius, of the 
2m 



530 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

highest class at least, is always humble. These operations 
took up much time ; yet he laboured hard this year both as a 
novelist and a historian. He contributed, moreover, several 
articles to the Quarterly Review and the Bannatyne Club 
library ; and to the Journal conducted by Mr. Gillies., an ex- 
cellent Essay on Moliere ; this last being again a free gift to 
the editor. 

But the first advertisement of 1828 was of a new order ; and 
the announcement that the Author of Waverley had Sermons 
in the press, was received perhaps with as much indredulity in 
the clerical world, as could have been excited among them by 
that of a romance from the Archbishop of Canterbury. A thin 
octavo volume, entitled " Religious Discourses b}^ a Layman," 
and having " W. S." at the foot of a short preface, did, how- 
ever, issue in the course of the spring, and from the shop, that 
all might be in perfect keeping, of Mr. Colburn, a bookseller 
then known almost exclusively as the standing purveyor of 
what is called light reading — novels of fashionable life and 
the like pretty ephemera. I am afraid that the Religious Dis- 
courses, too, would, but for the author's name, have had a brief 
existence ; but the history of their composition, besides suffi- 
ciently explaining the humility of these tracts in a literary as 
well as a theological point of view, will, I hope, gratify most of 
my readers. — Sir Walter's cicerone over Waterloo, in August 
1815, was a certain Major Pryse Gordon, then on half -pay, and 
resident at Brussels. The acquaintance, until they met at Sir 
Frederick Adam's table, had been slight ; but the Major was 
exceedingly attentive during Scott's stay, and afterwards took 
some pains about collecting reliques of the field for Abbotsford. 
One evening the poet supped at his house, and there happened 
to sit next him the host's eldest son, then a lad of nineteen, 
whose appearance and situation much interested him. He had 
been destined for the Church of Scotland, but, as he grew up, 
a deafness, which had come on him in boyhood, became worse 
and worse, and at length his friends feared that it must incapac- 
itate him for the clerical function. He had gone to spend the 
vacation with his father, and General Adam offered him a tem- 
porary appointment as a clerk in the Commissariat, which he 
hoped to convert into a permanent one, in case the war contin- 
ued. At the time of Scott's arrival that prospect was wellnigh 
gone, and the young man's infirmity, his embarrassment, and 
other things to which his own memorandum makes no allusion, 
excited the visitor's sympathy. Though there were lion- 
hunters of no small consequence in the party, he directed most 



RELIGIOUS DISCOURSES. 531 

of his talk into the poor clerk's ear-trumpet ; and at parting, 
begged him not to forget that he had a friend on Tweedside. 

A couple of years elapsed before he heard anything more of 
George Huntly Gordon, who then sent him his father's little 
spolia of Waterloo, and accompanied them by a letter explain- 
ing his situation, and asking advice, in a style which renewed 
and increased Scott's favourable impression. He had been dis- 
missed from the Commissariat at the general reduction of our 
establishments, and was now hesitating whether he had better 
take up again his views as to the Kirk, or turn his eyes towards 
English orders ; and in the meantime he was anxious to find 
some way of lightening to his parents, by his own industry, the 
completion of his professional education. There ensued a copi- 
ous correspondence between him and Scott, who gave him on 
all points of his case most paternal advice, and accompanied 
his counsels with offers of pecuniary assistance, of which the 
young man rarely availed himself. At length he resolved on 
re-entering the Divinity Class at Aberdeen, and in due time was 
licenced by the Presbytery there as a Preacher of the Gospel ; 
but though with good connexions, for he was " sprung of Sco- 
tia's gentler blood," his deafness operated as a serious bar to 
his obtaining the incumbency of a parish. The provincial 
Synod pronounced his deafness an insuperable objection, and 
the case was referred to the General Assembly. That tribunal 
heard the young man's cause maintained by all the skill and 
eloquence of Mr. Jeffrey, whose good offices had been secured 
by Scott's intervention, and they overruled the decision of the 
Synod. But Gordon, in the course of the discussion, gathered 
the conviction that a man almost literally stone-deaf could not 
discharge some of the highest duties of a parish-priest in a 
satisfactory manner, and he with honourable firmness declined 
to take advantage of the judgment of the Supreme Court. 
Meantime he had been employed, from the failure of John 
Ballantyne's health downwards, as the transcriber of the 
Waverley MSS. for the press, in which capacity he displayed 
every quality that could endear an amanuensis to an author ; 
and* when the disasters of 182G rendered it unnecessary for 
Scott to have his MS. copied, he exerted himself to procure 
employment for his young friend in one of the Government 
offices in London. Being backed by the kindness of the Duke 
of Gordon, his story found favour with the then Secretary of 
the Treasury, Mr. Lushington — and Mr Gordon was named 
assistant private secretary to that gentleman. The appoint- 
ment was temporary, but he so pleased his chief that there was 



532 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

hope of better things by and by. — Such was his situation at 
Christmas 1827 ; but that being his first Christmas in London, 
it was no wonder that he then discovered himself to have some- 
what miscalculated about money matters. In a word, he knew 
not whither to look at the moment for extrication, until he 
bethought him of the following little incident of his life at 
Abbotsford. 

He was spending the autumn of 1824 there, daily copying 
the MS. of E-edgauntlet, and working at leisure hours on the 
Catalogue of the Library, when the family observed him to be 
labouring under some extraordinary depression of mind. It 
was just then that he had at length obtained the prospect of a 
Living, and Sir Walter was surprised that this should not have 
exhilarated him. Gently sounding the trumpet, however, he 
discovered that the agitation of the question about the deafness 
had shaken his nerves — his scruples had been roused — his 
conscience was sensitive, — and he avowed that, though he 
thought, on the whole, he ought to go through with the busi- 
ness, he could not command his mind so as to prepare a couple 
of sermons, which, unless he summarily abandoned his object, 
must be produced on a certain day — then near at hand — 
before his Presbytery. Sir Walter reminded him that his exer- 
cises when on trial for the Probationership had given satisfac- 
tion ; — but nothing he could say was sufficient to rebrace Mr. 
Gordon's spirits, and he at length exclaimed, with tears, that 
his pen was powerless, — that he had made fifty attempts, and 
saw nothing but failure and disgrace before him. Scott an- 
swered — "My good young friend, leave this matter to me — 
do you work away at the Catalogue, and I'll write for you a 
couple of sermons, that shall pass muster well enough at Aber- 
deen." Gordon assented with a sigh ; and next morning Sir 
Walter gave him the MS. of the Religious Discourses. On 
reflection, Mr. Gordon considered it quite impossible to produce 
them at Aberdeen as his own : but they had remained in his 
hands ; and it now occurred to him that, if Sir Walter would 
allow him to dispose of these to some bookseller, they might 
possibly bring a price that would float him over his little diffi- 
culties of Christmas. 

The only entries in the Diary which relate to the business, 
are the following : — " December 28. Huntly Gordon writes 
me in despair about L.180 of debt which he has incurred. He 
wishes to publish two sermons which I wrote for him when 
lie was taking orders ; and he would get little money for 
them without my name. People may exclaim against the 



RELIGIOUS DISCOURSES. 533 

undesired and unwelcorned zeal of him who stretched his 
hands to help the ark over, with the best intentions, and cry- 
sacrilege. And yet they will do me gross injustice, for I would, 
if called upon, die a martyr for the Christian religion, so com- 
pletely is (in my poor opinion) its divine origin proved by its 
beneficial effects on the state of society. Were we but to name 
the abolition of slavery and polygamy, how much has, in these 
two words, been granted to mankind in the lessons of our Sav- 
iour ! — January 10, 1828. Huntly Gordon has disposed of 
the two sermons to the bookseller, Colburn, for L.250; well 
sold, I think, and to go forth immediately. I would rather 
the thing had not gone there, and far rather that it had gone 
nowhere, yet hang it, if it makes the poor lad easy, what needs 
I fret about it ? After all, there would be little grace in doing 
a kind thing, if you did not suffer pain or inconvenience upon 
the score." 

The next literary entry is this : — " Mr. Heath, the engraver, 
invites me to take charge of a yearly publication called the 
Keepsake, of which the plates are beyond comparison beau- 
tiful, but the letter-press indifferent enough. He proposes 
L.800 a-year if I would become editor, and L.400 if I would 
contribute from seventy to one hundred pages. I declined 
both, but told him I might give him some trifling thing or 
other. To become the stipendiary editor of a New-Year's-Gift 
Book is not to be thought of, nor could I agree to work regu- 
larly, for any quantity of supply, at such a publication. Even 
the pecuniary view is not flattering, though Mr. Heath meant 
it should be so. One hundred of his close printed pages, for 
which he offers L.400, are nearly equal to one volume of a 
novel. Each novel of three volumes brings L.4000, and I 
remain proprietor of the mine after the first ore is scooped 
out." The result was that Mr. Heath received, for L.500, the 
liberty of printing in his Keepsake the long-forgotten juvenile 
drama of the House of Aspen, with Aunt Margaret's Mirror, 
and two other little tales, which had been omitted, at Ballan- 
tyne's entreaty, from the second Chronicles of Croftangry. 
But Sir Walter regretted having meddled in any way with the 
toyshop of literature, and would never do so again, though 
repeatedly offered very large sums — nor even when the motive 
of private regard was added, upon Mr. Allan Cunningham's 
lending his name to one of these painted bladders. In the 
same week that Mr. Heath made his proposition, Sir Walter 
received another, which he thus disposes of in his Diary : — 
" I have an invitation from Messrs. Saunders and Ottley, book- 



534 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

sellers, offering me from L.1500 to L.2000 annually to conduct 
a journal ; but I am their humble servant. I am too indolent 
to stand to that sort of work, and I must preserve the undis- 
turbed use of my leisure, and possess my soul in quiet. A 
large income is not my object; I must clear my debts; and 
that is to be done by writing things of which I can retain the 
property." 

He finished his novel by the end of March, and immediately 
set out for London, where the last budget of proof-sheets 
reached him. The Fair Maid was. and continues to be, highly 
popular, and though never classed with his performances of 
the first file, it has undoubtedly several scenes equal to what 
the best of them can shew, and is on the whole a work of 
brilliant variety and most lively interest. 

Though the Introduction of 1830 says a good deal on the 
most original character, that of Connachar, the reader may not 
be sorry to have one paragraph on that subject from the 
Diary : — " December 5, 1827. The fellow that swam the Tay, 
and escaped, would be a good ludicrous character. But I have 
a mind to try him in the serious line of tragedy. Miss Baillie 
has made her Ethling a coward by temperament, and a hero 
when touched by filial affection. Suppose a man's nerves, 
supported by feelings of honour, or say by the spur of jealousy, 
sustaining him against constitutional timidity to a certain 
point, then suddenly giving way, I think something tragic 
might be produced. James Ballantyne's criticism is too much 
moulded upon the general taste of novels to admit (I fear) this 
species of reasoning. But what can one do ? I am hard up 
as far as imagination is concerned, — yet the world calls for 
novelty. Well, I'll try my brave coward or cowardly brave 
man. Valeat quantum." 

I alluded, in an early chapter, to a circumstance in Sir 
Walter's conduct which it was painful to mention, and added, 
that in advanced life he himself spoke of it with a deep feeling 
of contrition. Talking over this character of Connachar, just 
before the book appeared, he told me the unhappy fate of his 
brother Daniel and how he had declined to be present at his 
funeral or wear mourning -for him. He added — " My secret 
motive in this attempt was to perform a sort of expiation to my 
poor brother's manes. I have now learned to have more 
tolerance and compassion than I had in those days/"' I said he 
put me in mind of Samuel Johnson's standing bareheaded, in 
the last year of his life, on the market-place of Uttoxeter, by 
way of penance for a piece of juvenile irreverence towards his 



FAIR MAID OF PERTH. 535 

father. " Well, no matter/' said he ; " perhaps that's not the 
worst thing in the Doctor's story." 1 

Sir Walter and Miss Scott remained at this time six weeks 
in the Regent's Park. His eldest son's regiment was stationed 
at Hampton Court ; the second had recently taken his desk at 
the Foreign Office, and was living in my house ; he had thus 
looked forward to a happy meeting with all his family — but 
he encountered scenes of sickness and distress, in consequence 
of which I saw but little of him in general society. Nor is his 
Diary particularly interesting, with the exception of a few 
entries. That for May 1st is : — " Breakfasted with Lord and 
Lady Francis G-ower, and enjoyed the splendid treat of hear- 
ing Mrs. Arkwright sing her own music, which is of the 
highest order ; — no forced vagaries of the voice, no caprices of 
tone, but all telling upon and increasing the feeling the words 
require. This is 'marrying music to immortal verse.' Most 
people place them on separate maintenance." — Among other 
songs, Mrs. Arkwright delighted Sir Walter with her own set 
of — 

" Farewell ! farewell ! — The voice you hear 
Has left its last soft tone with you ; 
Its next must join the seaward cheer, 

And shout among the shouting crew," &c. 

He was sitting by me, at some distance from the lady, and 
whispered as she closed — " Capital words — whose are they ? 
Byron's, I suppose, but I don't remember them." He was 
astonished when I told him that they were his own in The 
Pirate. He seemed pleased at the moment, but said next 
minute — " You have distressed me — if memory goes, all is 
up with me, for that was always my strong point." 

" May 5. — Breakfasted with Hay don, and sat for my head. 
I hope this artist is on his legs again. The King has given 
him a lift, by buying his clever picture of the Mock Election 
in the King's Bench prison. Haydon was once a great admirer* 
and companion of the champions of the Cockney school, and 
is now disposed to renounce them and their opinions. To this 
kind of conversation I did not give much way. A painter 
should have nothing to do with politics. He is certainly a 
clever fellow, but too enthusiastic, which, however, distress 
seems to have cured in some degree. His wife, a pretty 
woman, looked happy to see me, and that is something. Yet 

1 See Boswell under August 1784. 



536 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

it was very little I could do to help thein. 1 — May 8. — Dined 
with Mrs. Alexander of Ballochmyle : — Lord and Lady Meath, 
who were kind to us in Ireland, and a Scottish party, pleasant 
from having the broad accents and honest thoughts of my 
native land. A large circle in the evening. A gentleman 
came up to me and asked 'If I had seen The Casket, a 
curious work, the most beautiful, the most highly ornamented, 
— and then the editor or editress — a female so interesting, — 
might he ask a very great favour ? ' and out he pulled a piece 
of this picnic. I was really angry, and said, — for a subscrip- 
tion he might command me; for a contributor — Xo. This 
may be misrepresented, but I care not. Suppose this patron 
of the Muses gives five guineas to his distressed lady, he will 
think he does a great deal, yet he takes fifty from me with the 
calmest air in the world ; for the communication is worth that 
if it be worth anything. There is no equalising in the pro- 
posal. — May 11. — Dined with his Majesty in a very private 
party, five or six only being present. It is impossible to con- 
ceive a more friendly manner than that his Majesty used towards 
me. — May 19. — Dined by command with the Duchess of 
Kent. I was very kindly recognised by Prince Leopold — and 
presented to the little Princess Victoria — I hope they will 
change her name — the heir-apparent to the crown as things 
now stand. How strange that so large and fine a family as 
that of his late Majesty, should have died off, or decayed 
into old age, with so few descendants. Prince George of 
Cumberland is, they say, a fine boy about nine years old — 
a bit of a Pickle. This little lady is educating with much 
care, and watched so closely, that no busy maid has a mo- 
ment to whisper, 'You are heir of England.' I suspect if 
we could dissect the little heart, we should find that some 
pigeon or other bird of the air had carried the matter. She 
is fair, like the royal family — the Duchess herself very pleas- 
ing and affable in her manners. I sat by Mr. Spring Rice, a 
very agreeable man. There were also Charles Wynn and his 
lady — and the evening, for a Court evening, went agreeably 
off. I am commanded for two days by Prince Leopold, but 
will send excuses. — May 25. — After a morning of letter- 
writing, leave-taking, papers destroying, and God knows what 

1 Sir Walter had shortly before been one of the contributors to a sub- 
scription for Mr. Haydon. The imprisonment from which this subscrip- 
tion relieved the artist produced, I need scarcely say, the picture mentioned 
in the Diary. This clever man concluded an unhappy history in the un- 
happiest manner in 1846. 



DINES WITH FRIENDS. 537 

trumpery, Sophia and I set out for Hampton Court, carrying 
with us the following lions and lionesses — Samuel Rogers, 
Tom Moore, Wordsworth, with wife and daughter. We were 
very kindly and properly received by Walter and his wife, 
and had a very pleasant day. At parting, Rogers gave me 
a gold-mounted pair of glasses, which I will not part with 
in a hurry. I really like S. R., and have always found him 
most friendly." 

Breakfasting one morning with Allan Cunningham (whose 
notes are before me), he looked round the table, and said, 
" What are you going to make of all these boys, Allan ? " — 
" I ask that question often at my own heart," said Allan, " and 
I cannot answer it." — " What does the eldest point to ? " — 
" The callant would fain be a soldier, Sir Walter — and I have 
half a promise of a commission in the King's army for him ; 
but I wish rather he could go to India, for there the pay is a 
maintenance, and one does not need interest at every step to 
get on." Scott dropped the subject; but went an hour after- 
wards to Lord Melville (who was now President of the Board 
of Control), and begged a cadetship for young Cunningham. 
Lord Melville promised to inquire if he had one at his disposal, 
in which case he would gladly serve the son of " honest Allan ; " 
but the point being thus left doubtful, Scott meeting Mr. John 
Loch, one of the East India Directors, at dinner the same 
evening, at Lord Stafford's, applied to him, and received an 
immediate assent. On reaching home at night, he found a 
note from Lord Melville, intimating that he had inquired, 
and was happy in complying with his request. Next morn- 
ing, Sir Walter appeared at Sir F. Chantrey's breakfast-table, 
and greeted the sculptor (a brother of the angle) with — "I 
suppose it has sometimes happened to you to catch one trout 
(which was all you thought of) with the fly, and another with 
the bobber. I have done so, and I think I shall land them both. 
Don't you think Cunningham would like very well to have 
cadetships for two of those fine lads ? " — " To be sure he 
would," said Chantrey, " and if you'll secure the commissions, 
I'll make the outfit easy." Great was the joy in Allan's house- 
hold on this double good news ; but I should add, that before 
the thing was done he had to thank another benefactor. Lord 
Melville, after all, went out of the Board of Control before he 
had been able to fulfil his promise; but his successor, Lord 
Ellenborough, on hearing the case, desired Cunningham to 
set his mind at rest ; and both his young men are now pros- 
pering in the India service. 



538 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

"Rokeby, May 30. — A mile from the house we met Morritt, 
looking for us. He is now one of my oldest, and I believe one 
of my most sincere friends ; — a man unequalled in the mix- 
ture of sound good sense, high literary cultivation, and the 
kindest and sweetest temper that ever graced a human bosom. 
His nieces are much attached to him, and are deserving and 
elegant as well as beautiful young women. — What there is in 
our partiality to female beauty that commands a species of 
temporary homage from the aged, as well as ecstatic admiration 
from the young, I cannot conceive ; but it is certain that a 
very large portion of some other amiable quality is too little 
to counterbalance the absolute want of this advantage. I, to 
whom beauty is, and shall henceforward be, a picture, still look 
upon it with the quiet devotion of an old worshipper, who no 
longer offers incense on the shrine, but peaceably presents his 
inch of taper, taking special care in doing so not to burn his 
own fingers. Nothing in life can be more ludicrous or con- 
temptible than an old man aping the passions of his youth." 

Next night Sir Walter rested at Carlisle, — "A sad place," 
says the Diary, " in my domestic remembrances, since here I 
married my poor Charlotte. She is gone, and I am following 
— faster, perhaps, than I wot of. It is something to have 
lived and loved; and our poor children are so hopeful and 
affectionate, that it chastens the sadness attending the thoughts 
of our separation." His feeling and sprightly companion 
wrote thus a day or two afterwards to her sister : — " Early 
in the morning before we started, papa took me with him to 
the Cathedral. This he had often done before; but he said 
he must stand once more on the spot where he married poor 
mamma. After that we went to the Castle, where a new show- 
man went through the old trick of pointing out Fergus Mac- 
Ivor's very dungeon. Peveril said — ' Indeed ? — are you 
quite sure, sir ? ' And on being told there could be no doubt, 
was troubled with a fit of coughing, which ended in a laugh. 
The man seemed exceedingly indignant, so when papa moved 
on, I whispered who it was. I wish you had seen the man's 
start, and how he stared and bowed as he parted from us ; and 
then rammed his keys into his pocket, and went off at a hand- 
gallop to warn the rest of the garrison. But the carriage was 
ready, and we escaped a row." 

They reached Abbotsford that night, and a day or two after- 
wards Edinburgh ; where Sir Walter was greeted with the sat- 
isfactory intelligence that his plans as to the Opus Magnum 
had been considered at a meeting of his trustees, and finally 



THE OPUS MAGNUM. 539 

approved in toto. As the scheme inferred a large outlay on 
drawings and engravings, and otherwise, this decision had been 
looked for with much anxiety by him and Mr. Cadell. He says 
— "I trust it will answer ; yet who can warrant the continu- 
ance of popularity ? Old Nattali Corri, who entered into many 
projects, and could never set the sails of a windmill to catch 
the aura popularis, used to say he believed that were he to 
turn baker, it would put bread out of fashion. I have had the 
better luck to dress my sails to every wind ; and so blow on, 
good wind, and spin round, whirligig." The Corri here alluded 
to was an unfortunate adventurer, who, among many other 
wild schemes, tried to set up an Italian opera at Edinburgh. 

During the remainder of this year Sir Walter never opened 
his " locked book.' 7 Whether in Edinburgh or the country, his 
life was such, that he describes himself, in several letters, as 
having become " a writing automaton." He had completed by 
Christmas the Second Series of Tales on Scottish History, and 
made considerable progress in another novel — Anne of Geier- 
stein: he had also drawn up for the Quarterly Review his 
article on Hajji Baba in England ; and that delightful one on 
Davy's Salmonia — which, like those on Planting and Garden- 
ing, abounds in sweet episodes of personal reminiscence. And, 
whenever he had not proof-sheets to press him, his hours were 
bestowed on the Opus Magnum. 

About this time died Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, the wid- 
ower of his first love, and the most generous and efficient friend 
in the late crisis of distress. On this event his letters have 
some very touching passages — but his feelings towards that 
admirable person have been sufficiently shewn in preceding 
extracts. 

Visiting Abbotsford at Christmas, I found him apparently 
well in health (except that he suffered from rheumatism), and 
enjoying the society, as usual, of the Fergussons, with the wel- 
come addition of Mr. Morritt and Sir James Steuart of Allan- 
bank — a gentleman whose masterly pencil had often been 
employed on subjects from his poetry and novels, and whose 
conversation on art (like that of Sir George Beaumont and Mr. 
Scrope), being devoid of professional pedantries and jealousies, 
was always particularly delightful to him. One snowy morn- 
ing, he gave us sheets of Anne of Geier stein, extending to, I 
think, about a volume and a half ; and we read them together 
in the library, while he worked in the adjoining room, and 
occasionally dropt in upon us to hear how we were pleased. All 
were highly gratified with those vivid and picturesque pages, — 



540 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

and both Morritt and Steuart, being familiar with the scenery 
of Switzerland, could not sufficiently express their astonish- 
ment at the felicity with which he had divined its pecidiar 
character, and outdone, by the force of imagination, all the 
efforts of a thousand actual tourists. Such approbation was of 
course very acceptable. I had seldom seen him more gently 
and tranquilly happy. 

When these friends left him, he went with me to my broth- 
er's in Clydesdale, and there enjoyed some days of relaxation. 
It was then that he first saw the self-educated sculptor, John 
Greenshields, who greatly interested him from a certain resem- 
blance to Burns, and took the first sitting for a very remark- 
able statue in freestone, now in Mr. Cadell's possession — the 
last work which this worthy man was destined to complete. 

Sir Walter's operations appear to have been interrupted ever 
and anon, during January and February 1829, in consequence 
of severe distress in the household of his printer ; whose warm 
affections were not, as in his own case, subjected to the author- 
ity of a stoical will. On the 14th of February the Diary says : 

— " The letters I received were numerous, and craved answers ; 
yet the 3d volume is getting on hooly and fairly. I am twenty 
leaves before the printer, but Ballantyne's wife is ill, and it is 
his nature to indulge apprehensions of the worst, which inca- 
pacitates him for labour. I cannot help regarding this amiable 
weakness of the mind with something too nearly allied to con- 
tempt." On the 17th, " I received the melancholy news that 
James Ballantyne had lost his wife. With his domestic habits 
the blow is irretrievable. What can he do, poor fellow, at the 
head of such a family of children ? I should not be surprised 
if he were to give way to despair." — James was not able to 
appear at his wife's funeral ; and this Scott viewed with some- 
thing more than pity. Next morning, however, says the Diary 

— " Ballantyne came in, to my surprise, about twelve o'clock. 
He was very serious, and spoke as if he had some idea of sud- 
den and speedy death. He has settled to go to the country, poor 
fellow!" — He retired accordingly to some sequestered place 
near Jedburgh, and there indulged his grief in solitude. Scott 
regarded this as weakness, and in part at least as wilful weak- 
ness, and addressed to him several letters of strong remon- 
strance and rebuke. In writing of the case to myself, he says 

— "I have a sore grievance in poor Ballantyne's increasing 
lowness of heart, and I fear he is sinking rapidly into the con- 
dition of a religious dreamer. His retirement from Edinburgh 
was the worst advised scheme in the world. I in vain reminded 



BALLANTYNE'S DOMESTIC TROUBLES. 511 

him, that when our Saviour himself was to be led into tempta- 
tion, the first thing the Devil thought of was to get him into 
the wilderness." — Ballantyne, after a few weeks, resumed his 
place in the printing-office ; but he addicted himself more and 
more to what his friend considered as erroneous and extrava- 
gant notions of religious doctrine ; and I regret to say that in 
this .difference originated a certain alienation, not of affection, 
but of confidence, which was visible to every near observer of 
their subsequent intercourse. Towards the last, indeed, they 
saw but little of each other. I suppose, however, it is needless 
to add, that down to the very last, Scott watched over Ballan- 
tyne's interests with undiminished attention. 

Many entries of his Diary during the Spring Session refer to 
the final carrying of the Roman Catholic Question. When the 
Duke of Wellington announced his intention of conceding those 
claims, there were meetings and petitions enough in Edinburgh 
as elsewhere ; and though Scott felt considerable repugnance to 
acting in any such matter with Whigs and Eadicals, in opposi- 
tion to a great section of the Tories, he ultimately resolved not 
to shrink from doing his part in support of the Duke's Govern- 
ment on that critical experiment. 1 He wrote, I believe, sev- 
eral articles in favour of the measure for the Weekly Journal ; 
he spoke, though shortly, at the principal meeting, and pro- 
posed one of its resolutions ; and when the consequent petition 
was read in the House of Commons, his name among the sub- 
scribers was received with such enthusiasm, that Sir Robert 
Peel thought fit to address to him a special and very cordial 
letter of thanks on that occasion. 

His novel was finished before breakfast on the 29th of April ; 
and his Diary mentions that immediately after breakfast he 
began his compendium of Scottish history for Dr. Lardner's 
Cyclopaedia. When the proprietors of that work, in July 
1828, offered him L.500 for an abstract of Scottish History in 
one volume, he declined the proposal. They subsequently 
offered L.700, and this was accepted ; but though he began the 
task under the impression that he should find it a heavy one, 
he soon warmed to the subject, and pursued it with cordial zeal 
and satisfaction. One volume, it by and by appeared, would 
never do, — in his own phrase, " he must have elbow-room " — 
and I believe it was finally settled that he should have L.1500 
for the book in two volumes ; of which the first was published 
before the end of this year. 

1 See Ante , p. 451. 



542 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Anne of Geierstein came out about the middle of May ; and 
this, which may be almost called the last work of his imagina- 
tive genius, was received at least as well — (out of Scotland, 
that is) — as the Fair Maid of Perth had been, or indeed as 
any novel of his after the Crusaders. I partake very strongly, 
I am aware, in the feeling which most of my own countrymen 
have little shame in avowing, that no novel of his, where 
neither scenery nor character is Scottish, belongs to the same 
pre-eminent class with those in which he paints and peoples 
his native landscape. I have confessed that I cannot rank 
even his best English romances with such creations as Waver- 
ley and Old Mortality ; far less can I believe that posterity 
will attach similar value to this Maid of the Mist. Its pages, 
however, display in undiminished perfection all the skill and 
grace of the mere artist, with occasional outbreaks of the old 
poetic spirit, more than sufficient to remove the work to an 
immeasurable distance from any of its order produced in this 
country in our own age. Indeed, the various play of fancy in 
the combination of persons and events, and the airy liveliness 
of both imagery and diction, may well justify us in applying 
to the author what he beautifully says of his King Bene — 

' ' A mirthful man he was ; the snows of age 
Fell, but they did not chill him. Gaiety, 
Even in life's closing, touch' d his teeming brain 
With such wild visions as the setting sun 
Raises in front of some hoar glacier, 
Painting the bleak ice with a thousand hues." 

It is a common saying that there is nothing so distinctive of 
genius as the retention, in advanced years, of the capacity to 
depict the feelings of youth with all their original glow and 
purity. But I apprehend this blessed distinction belongs to, 
and is the just reward of, virtuous genius only. In the case 
of extraordinary force of imagination, combined with the habit- 
ual indulgence of a selfish mood — not combined, that is to 
say, with the genial temper of mind and thought which God 
and Nature design to be kept alive in man by those domestic 
charities out of which the other social virtues so easily spring, 
and with which they find such endless links of interdepen- 
dence; — in this unhappy case, which none who has studied 
the biography of genius can pronounce to be a rare one, the 
very power which heaven bestowed seems to become, as old age 
darkens, the sternest avenger of its own misapplication. The 
retrospect of life is converted by its energy into one wide black- 



ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN. 543 

ness of desolate regret; and whether this breaks out in the 
shape of a rueful contemptuousness, or a sarcastic mockery of 
tone, the least drop of the poison is enough to paralyse all at- 
tempts at awakening sympathy by fanciful delineations of love 
and friendship. Perhaps Scott has nowhere painted such feel- 
ings more deliciously than in those very scenes of Anne of 
Geierstein, which offer every now and then, in some incidental 
circumstance or reflection, the best evidence that they are 
drawn by a grey-headed man. The whole of his own life was 
too present to his wonderful memory to permit of his brooding 
with exclusive partiality, whether painfully or pleasurably, on 
any one portion or phasis of it ; and besides, he was always 
living over again in his children, young at heart whenever he 
looked on them, and the world that was opening on them and 
their friends. But above all, he had a firm belief in the future 
reunion of those whom death has parted. 

He lost two more of his old intimates about this time ; — 
Mr. Terry in June, and Mr. Shortreed in the beginning of 
July. The Diary says : — " July 9. Heard of the death of poor 
Bob Shortreed, the companion of many a long ride among the 
hills in quest of old ballads. He was a merry companion, a 
good singer and mimic, and full of Scottish drollery. In his 
company, and under his guidance, I was able to see much of 
rural society in the mountains, which I could not otherwise 
have attained, and which I have made my use of. He was, in 
addition, a man of worth and character. I always burdened 
his hospitality while at Jedburgh on the circuit, and have 
been useful to some of his family. Poor fellow ! So glide 
our friends from us. Many recollections die with him and 
with poor Terry." 

His Diary has few more entries for this twelvemonth. 
Besides the volume of history for Lardner, he had ready by 
December the last of the Scottish Series of Tales of a Grand- 
father; and had made great progress in the prefaces and notes 
for Cadell's Opus Magnum. He had also overcome various 
difficulties which for a time interrupted the twin scheme of 
an illustrated edition of his Poems : and one of these in a 
manner honourably characteristic of the late John Murray of 
Albemarle Street, who had till now retained a share in the 
copyright of Marmion. Scott having requested him to sell 
that share, he generously replied : — " So highly do I estimate 
the honour of being, even in so small a degree, the publisher 
of the author of the poem, that no pecuniary consideration 
whatever can induce me to part with it. But there is a consid- 



544 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

eration of another kind, which nntil now I was not aware of, 
which would make it painful to me if I were to retain it a 
moment longer. I mean the knowledge of its being required 
by the author, into whose hands it was spontaneously resigned 
in the same instant that I read his request." 

The success of the collective novels was far beyond what 
either Sir Walter or Mr. Cadell had ventured to anticipate. 
Before the close of 1829, eight volumes had been issued ; and 
the monthly sale had reached as high as 35,000. Shoidd this 
go on, there was, indeed, every reason to hope that, coming in 
aid of undiminished industry in the preparation of new works, 
it would wipe off all his load of debt in the course of a very 
few years. And during the autumn (which I spent near him) 
it was most agreeable to observe the effects of the prosperous 
intelligence, which every succeeding month brought, upon his 
spirits. 

This was the more needed, that his eldest son, who had gone 
to the south of France on account of some unpleasant symp- 
toms in his health, did not at first seem to profit rapidly by 
the change of climate. He feared that the young man was 
not so obedient to his physicians as he ought to have been; 
and in one of many letters on this subject, after mentioning 
some of Cadell's good news as to the great affair, he says 
— " I have wrought hard, and so far successfully. But I tell 
you plainly, my dear boy, that if you permit your health to 
decline from want of attention, I have not strength of mind 
enough to exert myself in these matters as I have hitherto 
been doing." Happily Major Scott was, ere long, restored to 
his usual state of health and activity. 

Sir Walter himself, too, besides the usual allowance of 
rheumatism, and other lesser ailments, had an attack that 
season of a nature which gave his family great alarm, and 
which for several days he himself regarded with the darkest 
prognostications. After some weeks, during which he com- 
plained of headache and nervous irritation, certain haemor- 
rhages indicated the sort of relief required, and he obtained 
it from copious cupping. He says, in his Diary for June 3d — 
"The ugly symptom still continues. Either way I am firmly 
resolved. I wrote in the morning. The Court kept me till 
near two. In the evening Dr. Boss ordered me to be cupped, 
an operation which I only knew from its being practised by 
those eminent medical practitioners, the barbers of Bagdad. It 
is not painful ; and, I think, resembles a giant twisting about 
your flesh between his finger and thumb," After this he felt 



THBEATENING OF APOPLEXY. 545 

better, he said, than he had done for years before ; but there 
can be little doubt that the natural"evacuation was a very serious 
symptom. It was, in fact, the precursor of apoplexy. In tell- 
ing the Major of his recovery, he says — "The sale of the 
Novels is pro — di — gi — ous. If it last but a few years, it will 
clear my feet of old encumbrances, nay, perhaps, enable me to 
talk a word to our friend Mcol Milne. 

' But old ships must expect to get out of commission, 
Nor again to weigh anchor with yo heave ho I ' 

However that may be, I should be happy to die a free man; 
and I am sure you will all be kind to poor Anne, who will miss 
me most. I don't intend to die a minute sooner than I can 
help for all this ; but when a man takes to making blood instead 
of water, he is tempted to think on the possibility of his soon 
making earth." — Mr. Milne, be it observed, was the proprietor 
of a considerable estate conterminous with Abbotsford to the 
westward. 

Among a few other friends from a distance, Sir Walter re- 
ceived this summer a short visit from Mr. Hallam, and made 
in his company several of the little excursions which had in 
former days been of constant recurrence. Mr. Hallam had 
with him his son, Arthur, a young gentleman of extraordinary 
abilities, and as modest as able, who not long afterwards was 
cut off in the very bloom of opening life and genius. His 
beautiful verses on Melrose seen in company with Scott, have 
since been often printed. 

The close of the autumn was embittered by a sudden and 
most unexpected deprivation. Apparently in the fullest en- 
joyment of health and vigour, Thomas Purdie leaned his head 
one evening on the table, and dropped asleep. This was 
nothing uncommon in a hard-working man; and his family 
went and came about him for several hours, without taking any 
notice. When supper was ready, they tried to awaken him, 
and found that life had been for some time extinct. Far 
different from other years, Sir Walter seemed impatient to get 
away from Abbotsford to Edinburgh. " I have lost," he writes 
(4th November) to Cadell, " my old and faithful servant — my 
factotum — and am so much shocked, that I really wish to be 
quit of the country and safe in town. I have this day laid 
him in the grave. This has prevented my answering your 
letters." 

The grave, close to the Abbey at Melrose, is surmounted by 
a modest monument, having on two sides these inscriptions : — 
2n 



546 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

In grateful remembrance of the faithful and attached services of 
twenty-two years, and in soitow for the loss of a humble but 
sincere friend ; this stone was erected by Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 
of Abbotsford. 

Here lies the body of Thomas Purdie, ivood-forester at Abbotsford, 
who died 29th October 1829, aged sixty-two years. — " Thou 
hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over 
many things." — St. Matthew, chap. xxxv. ver. 21st. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Publication of the Ayrshire Tragedy, Letters on Demonology, Tales on 
the History of France, &c. — Apoplectic Seizure — Retirement from the 
Court of Session — Offers of a pension and of additional rank declined 
— Count Robert of Paris beguu — Death of George IV. — Political 
Commotions — Fourth Epistle of Malagrowther — Speech on Reform at 
Jedburgh. 1830-1831. 

At this time, Mr. Pitcairn was editing for the Bannatyne 
Chib that curious collection of Ancient Scotch Criminal Trials, 
which Scott reviewed in the Quarterly of 1831. On his arrival 
in Edinburgh, Mr. Pitcairn sent him a new volume in proof, 
requesting his attention particularly to its details on the ex- 
traordinary case of Mure of Auchindraine, a.d. 1611. Scott 
was so much interested with these documents, that he resolved 
to found a dramatic sketch on their terrible story ; and the 
result was a composition far superior to any of his previous 
attempts of that nature. Indeed, there are several passages in 
his Ayrshire Tragedy — especially that where the murdered 
corpse floats upright in the wake of the assassin's bark — (an 
incident suggested by a lamentable chapter in Lord Nelson's 
history) — which may bear comparison with anything but 
Shakspeare. Yet I doubt whether the prose narrative of the 
preface be not, on the whole, more dramatic than the versified 
scenes. It contains, by the way, some very striking allusions 
to the recent murder of Weare by Thurtell and others at Gill's 
Hill in Hertfordshire, and the atrocities of Burke and Hare in 
the West Port of Edinburgh. This piece was published in a 
thin octavo, early in 1830. 

But he was now to pay the penalty of his unparalleled toils. 
On the 15th of February, about two o'clock in the afternoon, he 
returned from the Parliament House apparently in his usual 
state, and found an old acquaintance, Miss Young of Hawick, 
waiting to shew him some MS. memoirs of her father (a 
dissenting minister of great worth and talents), which he had 
undertaken to revise and correct for the press. The old lady 
sat by him for half an hour, while he seemed to be occupied 
with her papers ; at length he rose, as if to dismiss her, but 

547 



548 LIFE OF SIR JVALTER SCOTT. 

sunk down again — a slight convulsion agitated his features. 
After a few minutes he got up and staggered to the drawing- 
room, where Anne Scott and my sister, Violet Lockhart, were 
sitting. They rushed to meet him, but he fell at all his length 
on the floor ere they could reach him. He remained speechless 
for about ten minutes, by which time a surgeon had arrived and 
bled him. He Avas cupped again in the evening, and gradually 
recovered possession of speech, and of all his faculties, in so 
far that, the occurrence being kept quiet, when he appeared 
abroad again after a short interval, people in general observed 
no serious change. He submitted to the utmost severity of 
regimen, tasting nothing but pulse and water for some weeks, 
and the alarm of his family and intimate friends subsided. By 
and by, he again mingled in society much as usual, and seems 
to have almost persuaded himself that the attack had proceeded 
merely from the stomach, though his letters continued ever and 
anon to drop hints that the symptoms resembled apoplexy or 
paralysis. When we recollect that both his father and his 
elder brother died of paralysis, and consider the violences of 
agitation and exertion to which Sir Walter had been subjected 
during the four preceding years, the only wonder is that this 
blow (which had, I suspect, several indistinct harbingers) was 
deferred so long ; there can be none that it was soon followed 
by others of the same description. 

He struggled manfully, however, against his malady and 
during 1830 covered almost as many sheets with his MS. as in 
1829. About March I find, from his correspondence with Bal- 
lantyne, that he was working regularly at his Letters on Demon- 
ology and Witchcraft for Murray's Family Library, and also 
on a Fourth Series of the Tales of a Grandfather, the subject 
being French History. Both of these books were published 
by the end of the year ; and the former contains many passages 
worthy of his best day — little snatches of picturesque narra- 
tive and the like — in fact, transcripts of his own familiar fire- 
side stories. The shrewdness with which evidence is sifted on 
legal cases attests, too, that the main reasoning faculty re- 
mained unshaken. But, on the whole, these works can hardly 
be submitted to a strict ordeal of criticism. There is in both 
a cloudiness both of words and arrangement. Nor can I speak 
differently of the second volume of his Scottish History for 
Lardner, which was published in May. His very pretty re- 
viewal of Mr. Southey's Life and Edition of Bunyan was done 
in August — about which time his recovery seems to have 
reached its acme. 



APOPLECTIC SEIZURE. 549 

In the course of the Spring Session, circumstances rendered 
it highly probable that Sir Walter's resignation of his place as 
Clerk of Session might be acceptable to the Government ; and 
it is not surprising that he should have, on the whole, been 
pleased to avail himself of this opportunity. He says, in his 
Diary — " May 27. I am agitating a proposed retirement from 
the Court. As they are only to have four instead of six Clerks 
of Session, it will be their interest to let me retire on a super- 
annuation. Probably I shall make a bad bargain, and get only 
two-thirds of the salary, instead of three-fourths. This would 
be hard, but I could save between two or three hundred pounds 
by giving up town residence. At any rate, jacta est alea. I 
think the difference will be infinite in point of health and 
happiness. Yet I do not know. It is perhaps a violent change 
in the end of life to quit the walk one has trod so long, and the 
cursed splenetic temper which besets all men makes you value 
opportunities and circumstances when one enjoys them no 
longer." 

On the 26th of June, he heard of the death of King George 
IV. with the regret of a devoted and obliged subject. He had 
received almost immediately before, two marks of his Majesty's 
kind attention. Understanding that his retirement from the 
Court of Session was at hand, Sir William Knighton suggested 
that he might henceforth be more frequently in London, and 
that he might fitly be placed at the head of a new commission 
for examining and editing the MSS. collections of the exiled 
Princes of the House of Stuart, which had come into the King's 
hands on the death of the Cardinal of York. This Sir Walter 
gladly accepted, and contemplated with pleasure spending the 
ensuing winter in London. But another proposition, that of 
elevating him to the rank of Privy Counsellor, was unhesitat- 
ingly declined. He desired the Lord Chief-Commissioner, 
whom the King had desired to ascertain his feelings on the 
subject, to convey his grateful thanks, with his humble apol- 
ogy : and his reasons are thus stated in the Diary of the suc- 
ceeding winter : — "I had also a kind communication about 
interfering to have me named a P. Counsellor. But — besides 
that when one is old and poor, one should avoid taking rank 
— I would be much happier if I thought any act of kindness 
was done to help forward Charles ; and having said so much, 
I made my bow, and declared my purpose of remaining satis- 
fied with my knighthood. All this is rather pleasing. Yet 
much of it looks like winding up my bottom for the rest of my 
life." 



550 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

In July came the formal intimation that he had ceased to be 
a Clerk of Session, and should thenceforth have, in lieu of his 
salary, &c. (L.130O) an allowance of L.800 per annum. This 
was accompanied by an intimation from the Home Secretary, 
that the Ministers were quite ready to grant him a pension 
covering the reduction of his income. Considering himself as 
the bond-slave of his creditors, he made known to them this 
proposition, and stated that it would be extremely painful to 
him to accept of it ; and with the delicacy and generosity which 
throughout characterised their conduct towards him, they with- 
out hesitation entreated him on no account to do injury to his 
own feelings in such a matter as this. Few things gave him 
more pleasure than this handsome communication. 

Just after he had taken leave of Edinburgh, as he seems to 
have thought for ever, he received a communication of another 
sort, as inopportune as any that ever reached him. His Diary 
for the 13th July says briefly — "I have a letter from a cer- 
tain young gentleman, announcing that his sister had so far 
mistaken the intentions of a lame baronet nigh sixty years old, 
as to suppose him only prevented by modesty from stating 
certain wishes and hopes, &c. The party is a woman of rank, 
so my vanity may be satisfied. But I excused myself, with 
little picking upon the terms." 

During the rest of the summer and autumn his daughter and 
I were at Chiefswood, and saw him of course daily. Laidlaw, 
too, had been restored to the cottage at Kaeside ; and though 
Tom Purdie made a dismal blank, old habits went on, and the 
course of life seemed little altered from what it had used to 
be. He looked jaded and worn before evening set in, yet very 
seldom departed from the strict regimen of his doctors, and 
often brightened up to all his former glee, though passing 
the bottle and sipping toast and water. His grandchildren 
especially saw no change. However languid, his spirits re- 
vived at the sight of them, and the greatest pleasure he had 
was in pacing Douce Davie through the green lanes among his 
woods, with them clustered about him on ponies and donkeys, 
while Laidlaw, the ladies, and myself, walked by, and obeyed 
his directions about pruning and marking trees. After the 
immediate alarms of the spring, it might have been even agree- 
able to witness this placid twilight scene, but for our knowl- 
edge that nothing could keep him from toiling many hours 
daily at his desk, and alas ! that he was no longer sustained 
by the daily commendations of his printer. It was obvious, 
as the season advanced, that the manner in which Ballantyne 



RETIREMENT FROM COURT OF SESSION. 551 

communicated with him was sinking into his spirits, and 
Laidlaw foresaw, as well as myself, that some trying crisis 
of discussion could not be much longer deferred. A nervous 
twitching about the muscles of the mouth was always more or 
less discernible from the date of the attack in February ; but 
we could easily tell, by the aggravation of that symptom, when 
he had received a packet from the Oanongate. It was distress- 
ing, indeed, to think that he might, one of these days, sustain 
a second seizure, and be left still more helpless, yet with the 
same undiminished appetite for literary labour. And then, 
if he felt his printer's complaints so keenly, what was to be 
expected in the case of a plain and undeniable manifestation 
of disappointment on the part of the public, and consequently 
of the bookseller ? 

All this was for the inner circle. Country neighbours went 
and came, without, I believe, observing almost anything of 
what grieved the family. Nay, this autumn he was far more 
troubled with the invasions of strangers, than he had ever been 
since his calamities of 1826. The astonishing success of the 
new editions was, as usual, doubled or trebled by rumour. The 
notion that he had already all but cleared off his encumbrances, 
seems to have been widely prevalent, and no doubt his refusal 
of a pension tended to confirm it. Abbotsford was, for some 
weeks at least, besieged much as it had used to be in the golden 
days of 1823 and 1824 ; and if sometimes his guests brought 
animation and pleasure with them, even then the result was 
a legacy of redoubled lassitude. The Diary, among a very 
few and far-separated entries, has this : — " September 5. — In 
spite of Resolution, I have left my Diary for some weeks, 
— I cannot well tell why. We have had abundance of travel- 
ling Counts and Countesses, Yankees male and female, and a 
Yankee-Doodle-Z)cmd?/ into the bargain — a smart young Vir- 
ginia-man. But we have had friends of our own also — the 
Miss Ardens, young Mrs. Morritt and Ann Morritt, most agree- 
able visitors. — Cadell came out here yesterday with his horn 
filled with good news. He calculates that in October the debt 
will be reduced to L. 60,000. This makes me care less about 
the terms I retire upon. The efforts by which we have advanced 
thus far are new in literature, and what is gained is secure." 

Mr. Cadell's great hope, when he offered this visit, had 
been that the good news of the Magnum might induce Sir 
Walter to content himself with working at notes and prefaces 
for its coming volumes, without straining at more difficult tasks. 
He found his friend, however, by no means disposed to adopt 



552 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

such views ; and suggested very kindly, and ingeniously too, 
by way of mezzo-termine, that before entering upon any new 
novel, he should draw up a sort of catalogue raisonnee of the 
most curious articles in his library and museum. Sir Walter 
grasped at this, and began next morning to dictate to Laidlaw 
what he designed to publish in the usual novel shape, under 
the title of " Reliquiae Trottcosienses, or the Gabions of Jona- 
than Oldbuck." Nothing, as it seemed to all about him, could 
have suited the time better ; but after a few days he said he 
found this was not sufficient — that he should proceed in it 
during liorae, subcesivm, but must bend himself to the com- 
position of a romance, founded on a story which he had more 
than once told cursorily already, and for which he had been 
revolving the various titles of Robert of the Isle — Count 
Robert de L'Isle — and Count Robert of Paris. There was 
nothing to be said in reply to the decisive announcement of 
this purpose. The usual agreements were drawn out ; and the 
Tale was begun. 

In the ensuing month (October 1830) the dethroned King 
of France, Charles X., was invited by the English Government 
to resume his old quarters at Holyrood; and among many 
other things that about this time mortified Scott, none gave 
him more pain than to hear that the popular feeling in Edin- 
burgh had been so much exacerbated against the fallen mon- 
arch (especially by an ungenerous article in the great literary 
organ of the place), that his reception there was likely to be 
rough and insulting. Sir Walter thought that on such an 
occasion his voice might, perhaps, be listened to. He knew his 
countrymen well in their strength, as well as in their weak- 
ness, and put forth in Ballantyne's newspaper for the 20th of 
October, a manly appeal to their better feelings — closing in 
these words : — " The person who writes these few lines is 
leaving his native city, never to return as a permanent resi- 
dent. He has some reason to be proud of distinctions received 
from his fellow-citizens ; and he has not the slightest doubt 
that the taste and good feeling of those whom he will still 
term so, will dictate to them the quiet, civil, and respectful 
tone of feeling, which will do honour both to their heads and 
their hearts, which have seldom been appealed to in vain. — The 
Frenchman Melinet, in mentioning the refuge afforded by 
Edinburgh to Henry VI. in his distress, records it as the most 
hospitable town in Europe. It is a testimony to be proud of, 
and sincerely do I hope there is little danger of forfeiting it 
upon the present occasion." 



COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS BEGUN. 553 

The effect of this admonition was even more complete than 
the writer had anticipated. The royal exiles were received 
with perfect decorum, which their modest bearing to all classes, 
and unobtrusive, though magnificent benevolence to the poor, 
ere long converted into a feeling of deep and affectionate re- 
spectfulness. During their stay in Scotland, the King took 
more than one opportunity of conveying to Sir Walter his 
gratitude for this salutary interference on his behalf. The 
ladies of the royal family had a curiosity to see Abbotsford, 
but being aware of his reduced health and wealth, took care 
to visit the place when he was known to be from home. Sev- 
eral French noblemen of the train, however, paid him their 
respects personally. I remember with particular pleasure a 
couple of days that the Duke of Laval-Montmorency spent 
with him : he was also gratified with a visit from Marshal 
Bourmont, though unfortunately that came after his ailments 
had much advanced. The Marshal was accompanied by the 
Baron d'Haussez, one of the Polignac Ministry, whose pub- 
lished account of his residence in this country contains no 
specimen of vain imbecility more pitiable than the page he 
gives to Abbotsford. So far from comprehending anything 
of his host's character or conversation, the Baron had not even 
eyes to observe that he was in a sorely dilapidated condition 
of bodily health. 

The reader has already seen that he had. many misgivings in 
contemplating his final retirement from the situation he had 
occupied for six-and-twenty years in the Court of Session. 
Such a breach in old habits is always a serious experiment; 
but in his case it was very particularly so, because it involved 
his losing during the winter months, when men most need 
society, the intercourse of almost all that remained to him of 
dear familiar friends. He had besides a love for the very 
stones of Edinburgh, and the thought that he was never again to 
sleep under a roof of his own in his native city, cost him many a 
pang. But he never alludes either in his Diary or in his letters 
(nor do I remember that he ever did so in conversation) to the 
circumstance which, far more than all besides, occasioned care 
and regret in the bosom of his family. However he might 
cling to the notion that his recent ailments sprung merely 
from a disordered stomach, they had dismissed that dream, and 
the heaviest of their thoughts was, that he was fixing himself 
in the country just when his health, perhaps his life, might 
depend any given hour on the immediate presence of a sur- 
gical hand. They reflected that the only practitioner resident 



554 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

within several miles of Mm might, in case of another seizure, 
come too late, even although the messenger should find him at 
home; but that his practice extended over a wide range of 
thinly-peopled country, and that at the hour of need he might 
as probably be half a day's journey off as at Melrose. We 
would fain have persuaded him that his library-catalogues, and 
other papers, had fallen into such confusion, that he ought to 
have some clever young student in the house during the winter 
to arrange them ; and had he taken the suggestion in good part, 
a medical student would of course have been selected. But, 
whether or not he suspected our real motive, he would listen to 
no such plan ; and his friendly surgeon (Mr. James Clarkson) 
then did the best he could for us, by instructing a confidential 
domestic, privately, in the use of the lancet. This was John 
Mcolson — a name never to be mentioned by any of Scott's 
family without respect and gratitude. He had been in the 
household from his boyhood, and was about this time (poor 
Dalgleish retiring from weak health) advanced to the chief 
place in it. Early and continued kindness had made a very 
deep impression on this fine handsome young man's warm 
heart ; he possessed intelligence, good sense, and a calm temper ; 
and the courage and dexterity which Sir Walter had delighted 
to see him display in sports and pastimes, proved henceforth 
of inestimable service to the master whom he regarded, I 
verily believe, with the love and reverence of a son. Since I 
have reached the period at which human beings owe so much 
to ministrations of this class, I may as well name by the side 
of Mcolson, Miss Scott's maid, Mrs. Celia Street — a young 
person whose unwearied zeal, coupled with a modest tact that 
stamped her one of Nature's gentlewomen, contributed hardly 
less to the comfort of Sir Walter and his children during the 
brief remainder of his life. 1 

Affliction, as it happened, lay heavy at this time on the kind 
house of Huntley Burn also. The eldest Miss Fergusson was 
on her deathbed ; and thus, when my wife and I were obliged 
to move southwards at the beginning of winter, Sir Walter was 
left almost entirely dependent on his daughter Anne, William 
Laidlaw, and the worthy domestics whom I have been naming. 
Laidlaw attended him as amanuensis, and often dined as well 
as breakfasted with him. A more delicate task never devolved 

1 On Sir Walter's death, Nicolson passed into the service of Mr. 
Morritt at Rokeby. He died at Kelso in 1841. Mrs. Street remained in 
my house till 1836, when she married Mr. Griffiths, a respectable farmer 
at Ealing. 



SCOTT'S ATTENDANTS. 555 

upon any man's friend, than he had about this time to en- 
counter. He could not watch Scott from hour to hour — above 
all, he could not write to his dictation, without gradually, 
slowly, most reluctantly taking home to his bosom the con- 
viction that the mighty mind, which he had worshipped 
through more than thirty years of intimacy, had lost something, 
and was daily losing something more of its energy. The 
faculties were there, and each of them was every now and 
then displaying itself in its full vigour; but the sagacious 
judgment, the brilliant fancy, the unrivalled memory, were all 
subject to occasional eclipse — 

" Amid the strings his ringers stray'd, 
And an uncertain warbling made." 

Ever and anon he paused and looked round him, like one half- 
waking from a dream, mocked with shadows. The sad be- 
wilderment of his gaze shewed a momentary consciousness 
that, like Samson in the lap of the Philistine, " his strength 
was passing from him, and he was becoming weak like unto 
Other men." Then came the strong effort of aroused will — 
the cloud dispersed as if before an irresistible current of purer 
air — all was bright and serene as of old — and then it closed 
again in yet deeper darkness. 

During the early part of this winter the situation of Cadell 
and Ballantyne was hardly less painful, and still more em- 
barrassing. What doubly and trebly perplexed them was, 
that while the MS. sent for press seemed worse every budget, 
Sir Walter's letters continued as clear in thought, and almost 
so in expression, as formerly — full of the old shrewdness 
and. firmness, and manly kindness, and even of the old good- 
humoured pleasantry. About them, except the staggering 
penmanship, and here and there one word put down obviously 
for another, there was scarcely anything to indicate decayed 
vigour. It is not surprising that poor Ballantyne, in particular, 
should have shrunk from the notion that anything was amiss, 
— except the choice of an unfortunate subject, and the indul- 
gence of more than common carelessness and rapidity in com- 
position. He seems to have done so as he would from some 
horrid suggestion of the Devil ; and accordingly obeyed his 
natural sense of duty, by stating, in plain terms, that he con- 
sidered the opening chapters of Count Robert as decidedly 
inferior to anything that had ever before come from that pen. 
James appears to have dwelt chiefly on the hopelessness of any 



556 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, 

Byzantine fable ; and lie might certainly have appealed to a 
long train of examples for the fatality which seems to hang 
over every attempt to awaken anything like a lively interest 
about the persons and manners of the generation in question ; 
the childish forms and bigotries, the weak pomps and drivelling 
pretensions, the miserable plots and treacheries, the tame 
worn-out civilisation of those European Chinese. The epoch 
on which Scott had fixed was, however, one that brought these 
doomed slaves of vanity and superstition into contact with the 
vigorous barbarism both of western Christendom and the advanc- 
ing Ottoman. Sir Walter had, years before, been struck with its 
capabilities ; x and who dares to say that, had he executed the 
work when he sketched the outline of its plan, he might not 
have achieved as signal a triumph over all critical prejudices, 
as he had done when he rescued Scottish romance from the 
mawkish degradation in which Waverley found it ? 

In himself and his own affairs there was enough to alarm 
and perplex him and all who watched him ; but the aspect of 
the political horizon also pressed more heavily upon his spirit 
than it had ever done before. All the evils which he had 
apprehended from the rupture among the Tory leaders in the 
beginning of 1827, were now, in his opinion, about to be con- 
summated. The high Protestant party, blinded by their 
resentment of the abolition of the Test Act and the Roman 
Catholic disabilities, seemed willing to run any risk for the 
purpose of driving the Duke of Wellington from the helm. 
The general election, occasioned by the demise of the Crown, 
was held while the successful revolts in France and Belgium 
were uppermost in every mind, and furnished the Liberal can- 
didates with captivating topics. The result had considerably 
strengthened the old opposition in the House of Commons; 
and a single vote, in which the ultra-Tories joined the Whigs, 
was considered by the Ministry as so ominous, that they imme- 
diately retired from office. The succeeding cabinet of Earl 
Grey included names identified, in Scott's view, with the 
wildest rage of innovation. Their first step was to announce 
a bill of Parliamentary Reform, on a large scale, for which 
it was soon known they had secured the warm personal sup- 
port of William IV. Great discontent prevailed, meanwhile, 
throughout the labouring classes of many districts, both com- 
mercial and rural. Every newspaper teemed with details of 
riot and incendiarism ; and the selection of such an epoch of 
impatience and turbulence for a legislative experiment — more 

1 See his Essay on Romance, 1823. 



POLITICAL COMMOTIONS. 557 

important than had ever before been agitated within the forms 
of the constitution — was perhaps regarded by most grave and 
retired men with feelings near akin to those of the anxious 
and melancholy invalid at Abbotsford. To annoy him addi- 
tionally, he found many eminent persons, who had hitherto 
avowed politics of his own colour, renouncing all their old 
tenets, and joining the cry of Reform, which to him sounded 
Revolution, as keenly as the keenest of those who had been 
through life considered apostles of Republicanism. And I 
must also observe, that as, notwithstanding his own steady 
Toryism, he had never allowed political differences to affect 
his private feelings towards friends and companions, so it now 
happened that among the few with whom he had daily inter- 
course, there was hardly one he could look to for sympathy 
in his present reflections and anticipations. The affectionate 
Laidlaw had always been a stout Whig ; he hailed the coming 
changes as the beginning of a political millennium. Ballan- 
tyne, influenced probably by his new ghostly counsellors, was by 
degrees leaning to a similar view of things. Cadell, his book- 
seller, and now the principal confidant and assistant from week 
to week in all his plans and speculations, had always, I pre- 
sume, considered the Tory creed as a piece of weakness — to 
be pardoned, indeed, in a poet and an antiquary, but at best 
pitied in men of any other class. 

Towards the end of November, Sir Walter had another 
slight touch of apoplexy. He recovered himself without assist- 
ance; but again consulted his physicians in Edinburgh, and 
by their advice adopted a still greater severity of regimen. 

The reader will now understand what his frame and condi- 
tion of health and spirits were, when he at length received 
from Ballantyne a decided protest against the novel on which 
he was struggling to fix the shattered energies of his memory 
and fancy. He replied thus : 

"Abbotsford, 8th Dec. 1830. 
" My Dear James, — If I were like other authors, as I flat- 
ter myself I am not, I should ' send you an order on my treas- 
urer for a hundred ducats, wishing you all prosperity and a 
little more taste ; ' 1 but having never supposed that any abili- 
ties I ever had were of a perpetual texture, I am glad when 
friends tell me what I might be long in finding out myself. 
Mr. Cadell will shew you what I have written to him. My 
present idea is to go abroad for a few months, if I hold to- 

1 Archbishop of Grenada, in Gil Bias. 



558 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

gether as long. So ended the Fathers of the Xovel — Fielding 
and Smollett — and it would be no unprofessional finish for 

yours — AY. S." 

This note to the printer, and a letter of the same date and 
strain to the publisher, " struck both,"' Mr. Cadell says, " with 
dismay." They resolved to go out to Abbotsford, but not for 
a few days, because a general meeting of the creditors was at 
hand, and there was reason to hope that its results would 
enable them to appear as the bearers of sundry pieces of good 
news. Meantime, Sir Walter himself rallied considerably, 
and resolved, by way of testing his powers, while the novel 
hung suspended, to write a fourth epistle of Malachi Mala- 
growther on the public affairs of the period. The announce- 
ment of a political dissertation, at such a moment of universal 
excitement, and from a hand already trembling under the mis- 
givings of a fatal malady, might well have filled Cadell and 
Ballantyne with new " dismay," even had they both been pre- 
pared to adopt, in the fullest extent, such views of the dangers 
of our state, and the remedies for them, as their friend was 
likely to dwell upon. They agreed that whatever they could 
safely do to avert this experiment must be done. Indeed they 
were both equally anxious to find, if it could be found, the 
means of withdrawing him from all literary labour, save only 
that of annotating his former novels. But they were not the 
only persons who had been, and then were, exerting all their 
art for that same purpose. His kind and skilful physicians, 
Doctors Abercrombie and Eoss of Edinburgh, had over and 
over preached the same doctrine, and assured him, that if he 
persisted in working his brain, nothing could prevent his 
malady from recurring ere long in redoubled severity. He 
answered — "As for bidding me not work, Molly might as 
well put the kettle on the fire and say. Xoic, don't boil" To 
myself, when I ventured to address him in a similar strain, he 
replied — " I understand you. and I thank you from my heart, 
but I must tell you at once how it is with me. I am not sure 
that I am quite myself in all things ; but I am sure that in one 
point there is no change. I mean, that I foresee distinctly 
that if I were to be idle I should go mad. In comparison to 
this, death is no risk to shrink from." 

The meeting of trustees and creditors took place on the 17th 
— Mr. George Forbes (brother to the late Sir William) in the 
chair. There was then announced another dividend on the 
Ballantyne estate of three shillings in the pound — thus reduc- 



FOURTH EPISTLE OF MALAGROWTHER. 559 

ing the original amount of the debt to about L. 54,000. It had 
been not unnaturally apprehended that the convulsed state of 
politics might have checked the sale of the Magnum Opus; 
but this does not seem to have been the case to any extent 
worth notice. The meeting was numerous — and, not contented 
with a renewed vote of thanks to their debtor, they passed 
unanimously a resolution, which was moved by Mr. (now Sir 
James) Gibson-Craig, and seconded by Mr. Thomas Allan — 
both, by the way, leading Whigs : — " That Sir Walter Scott 
be requested to accept of his furniture, plate, linens, paintings, 
library, and curiosities of every description, as the best means 
the creditors have of expressing their very high sense of his 
most honourable conduct, and in grateful acknowledgment for 
the unparalleled and most successful exertions he has made, 
and continues to make, for them." 

On the 18th, Cadell and Ballantyne proceeded to Abbots- 
ford, and found Sir Walter in a placid state — having evi- 
dently been much soothed and gratified with the tidings from 
Mr. Forbes. His whole appearance was greatly better than 
they had ventured to anticipate ; and deferring literary ques- 
tions till the morning, he made this gift from his creditors the 
chief subject of his conversation. He said it had taken a 
heavy load off his mind; he apprehended that, even if his 
future works should produce little money, the profits of the 
Magnum, during a limited number of years, with the sum 
which had been insured on his life, would be sufficient to oblit- 
erate the remaining part of the Ballantyne debt : he consid- 
ered the library and museum now conveyed to him as worth 
at the least L.10,000, and this would enable him to make some 
provision for his younger children. He said that he designed 
to execute his last will without delay, and detailed to his 
friends all the particulars which the document ultimately 
embraced. He mentioned to them that he had recently 
received, through the Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam, a mes- 
sage from the new King, intimating his Majesty's disposition 
to keep in mind his late brother's kind intentions with regard 
to Charles Scott ; — and altogether his talk, though grave, and 
on grave topics, was the reverse of melancholy. 

Next morning, in Sir Walter's study, Ballantyne read aloud 
the political essay — which had (after the old fashion) grown 
to an extent far beyond what the author contemplated when he 
began his task. To print it in the Weekly Journal, as originally 
proposed, would now be hardly compatible with the limits of 
that paper : Sir Walter had resolved on a separate publication. 



560 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

I believe no one ever saw this performance bnt the book- 
seller, the printer, and William Laidlaw ; and I cannot pretend 
to have gathered any clear notion of its contents, — except 
that the panacea was the reimposition of the income-tax ; and 
that after much reasoning in support of this measure, Sir 
Walter attacked the principle of Parliamentary Reform in toto. 
We need hardly suppose that he advanced any objections which 
would seem new to the students of the debates in both Houses 
during 1831 and 1832 ; his logic carried no conviction to the 
breast of his faithful amanuensis; but Mr. Laidlaw assured 
me, nevertheless, that in his opinion no composition of Sir 
Walter's happiest day contained anything more admirable than 
the bursts of indignant and pathetic eloquence which here and 
there " set off a halting argument." 

The critical arbiters, however, concurred in condemning the 
production. Cadell spoke out. He assured Sir Walter, that 
from not being in the habit of reading the newspapers and 
periodical works of the day, he had fallen behind the common 
rate of information on questions of practical policy ; that the 
views he was enforcing had been already expounded by many 
Tories, and triumphantly answered by organs of the Liberal 
party; but that, be the intrinsic value and merit of these 
political doctrines what they might, he was quite certain that 
to put them forth at that season would be a measure of ex- 
treme danger for the author's personal interest ; that it would 
throw a cloud over his general popularity, array a hundred 
active pens against any new work of another class that might 
soon follow, and perhaps even interrupt the hitherto splendid 
success of the Collection on which so much depended. On all 
these points Ballantyne, though with hesitation and diffidence, 
professed himself to be of Cadell's opinion. There ensued a 
scene of a very unpleasant sort ; but by and by a kind of com- 
promise, was agreed to: the plan of a separate pamphlet, with 
the well-known nom de guerre of Malachi, was dropt ; and Bal- 
lantyne was to stretch his columns so as to find room for the 
lucubration, adopting all possible means to mystify the public 
as to its parentage. This was the understanding when the 
conference broke up; but the unfortunate manuscript was 
soon afterwards committed to the flames. James Ballantyne 
accompanied the proof-sheet with many minute criticisms on 
the conduct as well as expression of the argument : the author's 
temper gave way and the commentary shared the fate of the text. 

Mr. Cadell opens a very brief account of this affair with 
expressing his opinion, that " Sir Walter never recovered it ; " 



FOURTH EPISTLE OF MALAGROWTHER. 561 

and he ends with an altogether needless apology for his own 
part in it. He did only what was his duty by his venerated 
friend ; and he did it, I donbt not, as kindly in manner as in 
spirit. Even if the fourth epistle of Malachi had been more 
like its precursors than I can well suppose it to have been, 
nothing could have been more unfortunate for Sir Walter than 
to come forward at that moment as a prominent antagonist of 
Keform. Such an appearance might very possibly have had 
the consequences to which the bookseller pointed in his remon- 
strance ; but at all events it must have involved him in a maze 
of replies and rejoinders ; and I think it too probable, that some 
of the fiery disputants of the periodical press, if not of St. 
Stephen's Chapel, might have been ingenious enough to con- 
nect any real or fancied flaws in his argument with those cir- 
cumstances in his personal condition which had for some time 
been darkening his own reflections with dim auguries of the 
fate of Swift and Marlborough. His reception of Ballantyne's 
affectionate candour may suggest what the effect of really 
hostile criticism would have been. The end was, that seeing 
how much he stood in need of some comfort, the printer and 
bookseller concurred in urging him not to despair of Count Eob- 
ert. They assured him that he had attached too much impor- 
tance to what had formerly been said about the defects of its 
opening chapters ; and he agreed to resume the novel, which 
neither of them ever expected he would live to finish. " If we 
did wrong," says Cadell, " we did it for the best ; we felt that 
to have spoken out as fairly on this as we had on the other 
subject, would have been to make ourselves the bearers of a 
death-warrant." I hope there are not many men who would 
have acted otherwise in their painful situation. 

The next entry of the Diary has these sentences : — " Ever 
since my fall in February, it is very certain that I have seemed 
to speak with an impediment. To add to this, I have the con- 
stant increase of my lameness — the thigh-joint, knee-joint, and 
ancle-joint. I move with great pain in the whole limb, and am 
at every minute, during an hour's walk, reminded of my mor- 
tality. I should not care for all this, if I were sure of dying 
handsomely; and Cadell's calculations might be sufficiently 
firm, though the author of Waverley had pulled on his last 
nightcap. Nay, they might be even more trustworthy, if re- 
mains, and memoirs, and such like, were to give a zest to the 
posthumous. But the fear is, lest the blow be not sufficient to de- 
stroy life, and that I should linger on, ' a driveller and a show.' " J 

1 Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes. 
2o 



562 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

He says again — " January 18, 1831. Dictated to Laidlaw 
till about one o'clock, during which time it was rainy. After- 
wards I walked, sliding about in the mud, and very uncom- 
fortable. In fact, there is no mistaking the Three Sufficients, 1 
and Fate is now straitening its circumvallations around me. — 
January 19. — Mr. Laidlaw came down at ten, and we wrote 
till one. This is an important help to me, as it saves both my 
eyesight and nerves, which last are cruelly affected by finding 
those who look out of the windows grow gradually darker and 
darker. Rode out, or, more properly, was carried out into the 
woods to see the course of a new road, which may serve to 
carry off the thinnings of the trees, and for rides. It is very 
well lined, and will serve both for beauty and convenience. 
Mr. Laidlaw engages to come back to dinner, and finish two or 
three more pages. Met my agreeable and lady-like neighbour, 
Mrs. Brewster, on my pony, and I was actually ashamed to be 
seen by her. 

'Sir Denis Brand! and on so poor a steed! ' 2 

I believe detestable folly of this kind is the very last that 
leaves us. One would have thought I ought to have little 
vanity at this time o' day ; but it is an abiding appurtenance 
of the old Adam, and I write for penance what, like a fool, I 
actually felt. I think the peep, real or imaginary, at the gates 
of death, should have given me firmness not to mind little 
afflictions." 

On the 31st of January, Miss Scott being too unwell for a 
journey, Sir Walter went alone to Edinburgh for the purpose 
of executing his last will. He (for the first time in his native 
town) took up his quarters at a hotel; but the noise of the 
street disturbed him during the night (another evidence how 
much his nervous system had been shattered), and next day 
he was persuaded to remove to his bookseller's house in Athol 
Crescent. In the apartment allotted to him there, he found 
several little pieces of furniture which some kind person had 
purchased for him at the sale in Castle Street, and which he 
presented to Mrs. Cadell. "Here," says his letter to Mrs. 
Lockhart, " I saw various things that belonged to poor No. 39. 
I had many sad thoughts on seeing and handling them — but 
they are in kind keeping, and I was glad they had not gone 
to strangers." 

There came on, next day, a storm of such severity that he 

1 See Piozzi's Tale of The Tliree Sufficient Warnings. 

2 Crabbe's Borough, Letter xiii. 



EXECUTES HIS WILL. 563 

had to remain under this friendly roof until the 9th of Febru- 
ary. His host perceived that he was unfit for any company 
but the quietest, and had sometimes one old friend, Mr. Thom- 
son, Mr. Clerk, or Mr. Skene, to dinner — but no more. He 
seemed glad to see them — but they all observed him with 
pain. He never took the lead in conversation, and often re- 
mained altogether silent. In the mornings he wrote usually 
for several hours at Count Eobert ; and Mr. Cadell remembers 
in particular, that on Ballantyne's reminding him that a motto 
was wanted for one of the chapters already finished, he looked 
out for a moment at the gloomy weather, and penned these 
lines — 

" The storm increases — 'tis no sunny shower, 
Foster'd in the moist breast of March or April. 
Or such as parched Summer cools his lips with. 
Heaven's windows are flung wide ; the inmost.deeps 
Call in hoarse greeting one upon another ; 
On comes the flood in all its foaming horrors, 
And where's the dike shall stop it ? " 

The Deluge : a Poem. 

On the 4th February, the will was signed, and attested by 
Nicolson, to whom Sir Walter explained the nature of the doc- 
ument, adding, " I deposit it for safety in Mr. Cadell's hands, 
and I still hope it may be long before he has occasion to pro- 
duce it." Poor Mcolson was much agitated, but stammered 
out a deep amen. 

Another object of this journey was to consult, on the advice 
of Dr. Ebenezer Clarkson, a skilful mechanist, by name Fort- 
une, about a contrivance for the support of the lame limb, 
which had of late given him much pain, as well as inconven- 
ience. Mr. Fortune produced a clever piece of handiwork, and 
Sir Walter felt at first great relief from the use of it: insomuch 
that his spirits rose to quite the old pitch, and his letter to me 
upon the occasion overflows with merry applications of sundry 
maxims and verses about Fortune: " Fortes Fortuna adjuvat," 
&c. &c. 

Of this excursion the Diary says — " Ahbotsford, February 9. 
The snow became impassable, and in Edinburgh I remained 
immoveably fixed for ten days, never getting out of doors, save 
once or twice to dinner, when I went and returned in a sedan- 
chair. Cadell made a point of my coming to his excellent 
house, where I had no less excellent an apartment, and the most 
kind treatment ; that is, no making a show of me, for which I 
was in but bad tune. Abercrombie and Boss had me bled with 



564 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

cupping-glasses, reduced me confoundedly, and restricted me of 
all creature comforts. But they did me good, as I am sure they 
sincerely meant to do ; I got rid of a giddy feeling which I had 
been plagued with, and have certainly returned much better. I 
did not neglect my testamentary affairs. I executed my last 
will, leaving Walter burdened with L.1000 to Sophia, L.2000 
to Anne, and the same to Charles. He is to advance them this 
money if they want it ; if not, to pay them interest. All this 
is his own choice, otherwise I would have sold the books and 
rattletraps. I have made provisions for clearing my estate by 
my publications, should it be possible ; and should that prove 
possible, from the time of such clearance being effected, to be 
a fund available to all my children who shall be alive or leave 
representatives. My bequests must, many of them, seem hypo- 
thetical." 

At the beginning of March, he was anew roused about politi- 
cal affairs ; and bestowed four days in drawing up an address 
against the Reform Bill, which he designed to be adopted by 
the Freeholders of the Forest. They, however, preferred a 
shorter one from the pen of a plain practical country gentle- 
man (the late Mr. Elliot Lockhart of Borthwickbrae), who had 
often represented them in Parliament : and Sir Walter, it is 
probable, felt this disappointment more acutely than he has 
chosen to indicate in his Journal. 

"March 11. — This day we had our meeting at Selkirk. I 
found Borthwickbrae had sent the frame of an address. It 
was the reverse of mine in every respect. As I saw that it 
met the ideas of the meeting (six in number) better by far 
than mine, I instantly put that in my pocket. It gives me a 
right to decline future interference, and let the world wag — 
'Transeat cum caeteris erroribus.' — I will make my opinion 
public at every place where I shall be called upon or expected 
to appear ; but I will not thrust myself forward again. May 
the Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep 
this vow ! " 

He kept it in all parts. Though urged to take up his pen 
against the Reform Bill, by several persons of high conse- 
quence, who of course little knew his real condition of health, 
he resolutely refused to make any such experiment again. But 
he was equally resolved to be absent from no meeting at which, 
as Sheriff or Deputy-Lieutenant, he might naturally be expected 
to appear in his place, and record his aversion to the Bill. The 
first of these meetings was one of the freeholders of Roxburgh, 
held at Jedburgh on the 21st of March, and there, to the dis- 



SPEECH ON REFORM AT JEDBURGH. 565 

tress and alarm of his daughter, he insisted on being present, 
and proposing one of the Tory resolutions, — which he did in 
a speech of some length, but delivered in a tone so low, and 
with such hesitation in utterance, that only a few detached 
passages were intelligible to the bulk of the audience. 

" We are told " (said he) " on high authority, that France is 
the model for us, — that we and all the other nations ought to 
put ourselves to school there, — and endeavour to take out our 
degrees at the University of Paris. 1 The French are a very in- 
genious people ; they have often tried to borrow from us, and 
now we should repay the obligation by borrowing a leaf from 
them. But I fear there is an incompatibility between the 
tastes and habits of France and Britain, and that we may suc- 
ceed as ill in copying them, as they have hitherto done in copy- 
ing us. We, in this district, are proud, and with reason, that 
the first chain-bridge was the work of a Scotchman. It still 
hangs where he erected it, a pretty long time ago. The French 
heard of our invention, and determined to introduce it, but with 
great improvements and embellishments. A friend of my own 
saw the thing tried. It was on the Seine, at Marly. The French 
chain-bridge looked lighter and airier than the prototype. Every 
Englishman present was disposed to confess that we had been 
beaten at our own trade. But by and by the gates were opened, 
and the multitude were to pass over. It began to swing rather 
formidably beneath the pressure of the good company ; and by 
the time the architect, who led the procession in great pomp 
and glory, reached the middle, the whole gave way, and he — 
worthy, patriotic artist — was the first that got a ducking. 
They had forgot the great middle bolt — or rather, this ingen- 
ious person had conceived that to be a clumsy-looking feature, 
which might safely be dispensed with, while he put some in- 
visible gimcrack of his own to supply its place." Here Sir 

Walter was interrupted by violent hissing and hooting from 
the populace of the town, who had flocked in and occupied 
the greater part of the Court-House. He stood calmly till the 
storm subsided, and resumed ; but the friend, whose notes are 
before me, could not catch what he said, until his voice rose 
with another illustration of the old style. " My friends," he 
said, " I am old and failing, and you think me full of very 
silly prejudices ; but I have seen a good deal of public men, 
and thought a good deal of public affairs in my day, and I 
can't help suspecting that the manufacturers of this new con- 
stitution are like a parcel of schoolboys taking to pieces a 

1 See Edinburgh Review for October 1830, p. 23. 



566 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

watch which used to go tolerably well for all practical purposes, 
in the conceit that they can put it together again far better 
than the old watchmaker. I fear they will fail when they 
come to the reconstruction, and I should not, I confess, be 
much surprised if it were to turn out that their first step had 
been to break the main-spring." — Here he was again stopped 
by a Babel of contemptuous sounds, which seemed likely to 
render further attempts ineffectual. He, abruptly and un- 
heard, proposed his Eesolution, and then, turning to the riot- 
ous a-rtisans, exclaimed — "I regard your gabble no more than 
the geese on the green." His countenance glowed with indig- 
nation, as he resumed his seat on the bench. But when, a few 
moments afterwards, the business being over, he rose to with- 
draw, every trace of passion was gone. He turned round at 
the door, and bowed to the assembly. Two or three, not more, 
renewed their hissing ; he bowed again, and took leave in 
the words of the doomed gladiator, which I hope none who 
had joined in these insults understood — " Moriturus vos 

SALUTO." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

Apoplectic Paralysis — Miss Ferrier — Election Scenes at Jedburgh and 
Selkirk — Castle Dangerous begun — Excursion to Douglasdale — Visits 
of Captain Burns and Wordsworth — Departure from Abbotsford — 
London — Voyage in the Barham — Malta — Naples — Rome — Notes 
by Mrs. Davy, Sir W. Gell, and Mr. E. Cheney — Publication of the 
last Tales of my Landlord. 1831-1832. 

After a pause of some days, the Diary lias this entry for 
April 25, 1831: — "From Saturday 16th April, to Saturday 
24th of the same month, unpleasantly occupied by ill health 
and its consequences. A distinct stroke of paralysis affecting 
both my nerves and speech, though beginning only on Monday 
with a very bad cold. Doctor Abercrombie was brought out 
by the friendly care of Cadell, — but young Clarkson had 
already done the needful, that is, had bled and blistered, and 
placed me on a very reduced diet. Whether precautions have 
been taken in time, I cannot tell. I think they have, though 
severe in themselves, beat the disease; but I am alike pre- 
pared." 

The preceding paragraph has been deciphered with difficulty. 
The blow which it records was greatly more severe than any 
that had gone before it. Sir Walter's friend Lord Meadow- 
bank had come to Abbotsford, as usual when on the Jedburgh 
circuit ; and he would make an effort to receive the Judge in 
something of the old style of the place ; he collected several of 
the neighbouring gentry to dinner, and tried to bear his wonted 
part in the conversation. Feeling his strength and spirits flag- 
ging, he was tempted to violate his physician's directions, and 
took two or three glasses of champagne, not having tasted 
wine for several months before. On retiring to his dressing- 
room he had this severe shock of apoplectic paralysis, and 
kept his bed under the surgeon's hands for several days. 

Shortly afterwards his eldest son and his daughter Sophia 
arrived at Abbotsford. It may be supposed that they both 
would have been near him instantly, had that been possible ; 
but Major Scott's regiment was stationed in a very disturbed 
district, and his sister was in a disabled state from the relics 

667 



568 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

of a fever. I followed lier a week later, when we established 
ourselves at Chiefswood for the rest of the season. Charles 
Scott had some months before this time gone to Naples, as an 
attache to the British embassy there. During the next six 
months the Major was at Abbotsford every now and then — as 
often as circumstances could permit him to be absent from his 
Hussars. 

On my arrival (May 10th), I found Sir Walter to have rallied 
considerably ; yet his appearance, as I first saw him, was the 
most painful sight I had ever then seen. Knowing at what 
time I might be expected, he had been lifted on his pony, and 
advanced about half a mile on the Selkirk road to meet me. 
He moved at a foot-pace, with Laidlaw at one stirrup, and his 
forester Swanston (a fine fellow, who did all he could to replace 
Tom Purdie) at the other. Abreast was old Peter Mathieson 
on horseback, with one of my children astride before him on a 
pillion. Sir Walter had had his head shaved, and wore a black 
silk night-cap under his blue bonnet. All his garments hung 
loose about him ; his countenance was thin and haggard, and 
there was an obvious distortion in the muscles of one cheek. 
His look, however, was placid — his eye was bright as ever — 
perhaps brighter than it ever was in health; he smiled with 
the same affectionate gentleness, and though at first it was not 
easy to understand everything he said, he spoke cheerfully 
and manfully. 

He had resumed, and was trying to recast, his novel. All 
the medical men had urged him, by every argument, to abstain 
from any such attempts ; but he smiled on them in silence, or 
answered with some jocular rhyme. One note has this post- 
script — a parody on a sweet lyric of Burns : — 

" Dour, dour, and eident was he, 
Dour and eident but-and-ben — 
Dour against their barley-water, 
And eident on the Bramah pen." 

He told me, that in the winter he had more than once tried 
writing with his own hand, because he had no longer the same 
" pith and birr " that formerly rendered dictation easy to him ; 
but that the experiment failed. He was now sensible he could 
do nothing without Laidlaw to hold the Bramah pen ; adding, 
" Willie is a kind clerk — I see by his looks when I am pleas- 
ing him, and that pleases me." And however the cool critic 
may now estimate Count "Robert, no one who then saw the au- 
thor could wonder that Laidlaw's prevalent feeling in writing 



MISS FERBIER. 569 

those pages should have been admiration. Under the full con- 
sciousness that he had sustained three or four strokes of apo- 
plexy or palsy, or both combined, and tortured by various 
attendant ailments — cramp, rheumatism in half his joints, 
daily increasing lameness, and now of late gravel (which was, 
though last, not least) — he retained all the energy of his will, 
struggled manfully against this sea of troubles, and might well 
have said seriously, as he more than once both said and wrote 
playfully, 

" 'Tis not in mortals to command success, 
But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." 1 

To assist them in amusing him in the hours which he spent 
out of his study, and especially that he might be tempted to 
make those hours more frequent, his daughters had invited his 
friend the authoress of Marriage to come out to Abbotsford; 
and her coming was serviceable. For she knew and loved him 
well, and she had seen enough of affliction akin to his, to be 
well skilled in dealing with it. She could not be an hour in 
his company without observing what filled his children with 
more sorrow than all the rest of the case. He would begin a 
story as gaily as ever, and go on, in spite of the hesitation in 
his speech, to tell it with picturesque effect ; — but before he 
reached the point, it would seem as if some internal spring had 
given way — he paused and gazed round him with the blank 
anxiety of look that a blind man has when he has dropped his 
staff. Unthinking friends sometimes pained him sadly by 
giving him the catchword abruptly. I noticed the delicacy of 
Miss Ferrier on such occasions. Her sight was bad, and she 
took care not to use her glasses when he was speaking ; and 
she affected to be also troubled with deafness, and would say 
— " Well, I am getting as dull as a post — I have not heard 
a word since you said so and so : " — being sure to mention a 
circumstance behind that at which he had really halted. He 
then took up the thread with his habitual smile of courtesy — 
as if forgetting his case entirely in the consideration of the 
lady's infirmity. — He had also a visit from the learned and 
pious Dr. Macintosh Mackay, then minister of Laggan, but 
now at Dunoon — the chief author of the Gaelic Dictionary, 
then recently published under the auspices of the Highland 
Society ; and this gentleman also accommodated himself, with 
the tact of genuine kindness, to the circumstances of the time. 

In the family circle Sir Walter seldom spoke of his illness 

1 Addison's Cato. 



570 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

at all, and when lie did, it was always in the hopeful strain. 
In private to Laidlaw and myself, his language corresponded 
exactly with the tone of the Diary — he expressed his belief 
that the chances of recovery were few — very few — but always 
added, that he considered it his duty to exert what faculties 
remained to him, for the sake of his creditors, to the very last. 
"I am very anxious," he repeatedly said to me, " to be done, one 
way or other, with this Count Robert, and a little story about 
the Castle Dangerous, which also I had long had in my head — 
but after that I will attempt nothing more — at least not until 
I have finished all the notes for the novels, &c. ; for, in case of 
my going off at the next slap, you would naturally have to 
take up that job, — and where could you get at all my old 
wives' stories ? " 

I felt the sincerest pity for Cadell and Ballantyne at this 
time ; and advised him to lay Count Robert aside for a few 
weeks at all events, until the general election now going on 
should be over. He consented — but immediately began another 
series of Tales on French History — which he never completed. 

On the 18th of May, I witnessed a scene which must dwell 
painfully on many memories besides mine. The rumours of 
brick-bat and bludgeon work at the hustings of this month 
were so prevalent, that Sir "Walter's family, and not less zeal- 
ously the Tory candidate (Henry Scott, heir of Harden, now 
Lord Polwarth), tried every means to dissuade him from at- 
tending the election for Roxburghshire. We thought over- 
night that we had succeeded, and indeed, as the result of the 
vote was not at all doubtful, there could be no good reason for 
his appearing on this occasion. About seven in the morning, 
however, when I came downstairs intending to ride over to 
Jedburgh, I found he had countermanded my horse, ordered 
his chariot to the door, and was already impatient to be off for 
the scene of action. We found the town in a most tempestu- 
ous state : in fact, it was almost wholly in the hands of a dis- 
ciplined rabble, chiefly weavers from Hawick, who marched 
up and down with drums and banners, and then, after filling 
the Court-hall, lined the streets, grossly insulting every one 
who did not wear the reforming colours. Sir Walter's carriage, 
as it advanced towards the house of the Shortreed family, was 
pelted with stones ; one or two fell into it, but none touched 
him. He breakfasted with the widow and children of his old 
friend, and then walked to the Hall between me and one of 
the young Shortreeds. He was saluted with groans and blas- 
phemies all the way — and I blush to add that a woman spat 



RIOT AT JEDBURGH AND SELKIRK. 571 

upon him from a window ; but this last contumely I think he 
did not observe. The scene within was much what has been 
described under the date of March 21st, except that though he 
attempted to speak from the Bench, not a word was audible, 
such was the frenzy. Young Harden was returned by a great 
majority, 40 to 19, and we then with difficulty gained the inn 
where the carriage had been put up. But the aspect of the 
street was by that time such, that several of the gentlemen on 
the Whig side came and entreated us not to attempt starting 
from the front of our inn. One of them, Captain Russell 
Elliot of the Royal Navy, lived in the town, or rather in a villa 
adjoining it, to the rear of the Spread Eagle. Sir Walter was 
at last persuaded to accept this courteous adversary's invita- 
tion, and accompanied him through some winding lanes to his 
residence. Peter Mathieson by and by brought the carriage 
thither, in the same clandestine method, and we escaped from 
Jedburgh — with one shower more of stones at the Bridge. I 
believe there would have been a determined onset at that spot, 
but for the zeal of three or four sturdy Darnickers (Joseph 
Shillinglaw, carpenter, being their Coryphaeus), who had, unob- 
served by us, clustered themselves beside the footman in the 
rumble. The Diary contains this brief notice : — " May 18. — 
Went to Jedburgh greatly against the wishes of my daughters. 
The mob were exceedingly vociferous and brutal, as they usu- 
ally are nowadays. The population gathered in formidable 
numbers — a thousand from Hawick also — sad blackguards. 
The day passed with much clamour and no mischief. Henry 
Scott was re-elected — for the last time, I suppose. Trojafuit. 
I left the borough in the midst of abuse, and the gentle hint of 
Burk Sir Walter. Much obliged to the brave lads of Jeddart." 
Sir Walter fully anticipated a scene of similar violence at 
the Selkirk election, which occurred a few days afterwards ; 
but though here also, by help of weavers from a distance, there 
was a sufficiently formidable display of Radical power, there 
occurred hardly anything of what had been apprehended. 
Here the Sheriff was at home — known intimately to every- 
body, himself probably knowing almost all of man's estate by 
head mark, and, in spite of political fanaticism, all but uni- 
versally beloved as well as feared. The only person who ven- 
tured actually to hustle a Tory elector on his way to the poll, 
attracted Scott's observation at the moment when he was get- 
ting out of his carriage ; he instantly seized the delinquent 
with his own hand — the man's spirit quailed, and no one 
coming to the rescue, he was safely committed to prison until 



572 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

the business of the day was over. Sir Walter had ex officio to 
preside at this election, and therefore his family would prob- 
ably have made no attempt to dissuade him from attending it, 
even had he staid away from Jedburgh. Among the exagger- 
ated rumours of the time, was one that Lord William Graham, 
the Tory candidate for Dumbartonshire, had been actually 
massacred by the rabble of his county town. He had been 
grievously maltreated, but escaped murder, though, I believe, 
narrowly. But I can never forget the high glow which suf- 
fused Sir Walter's countenance when he heard the overbur- 
dened story, and said calmly, in rather a clear voice, the trace 
of his calamitous affliction almost disappearing for the moment 
— " Well, Lord William died at his post — 

' Non aliter cineres rnando jacere meos.' " 1 

I am well pleased that the ancient capital of the Forest did 
not stain its fair name upon this miserable occasion; and I 
am sorry for Jedburgh and Hawick. This last town stands 
almost within sight of Branksome Hall, overhanging, also, 
sweet Teviofs silver tide. The civilised American or Australian 
will curse these places, of which he would never have heard 
but for Scott, as he passes through them in some distant 
century, when perhaps all that remains of our national glories 
may be the high literature adopted and extended in new lands 
planted from our blood. 

No doubt these disturbances of the general election had an 
unfavourable influence on the invalid. When they were over, 
he grew calmer and more collected ; his speech became, after a 
little time, much clearer, and such were the symptoms of energy 
still about him, that I began to think a restoration not hopeless. 
Some business called me to London about the middle of June, 
and when I returned at the end of three weeks, I had the satis- 
faction to find that he had been gradually amending. 

But, alas ! the first use he made of this partial renovation 
had been to expose his brain once more to an imaginative task. 
He began his Castle Dangerous — the ground-work being again 
an old story which he had told in print, many years before, in 
a rapid manner. 2 And now, for the first time, he left Ballan- 
tyne out of his secret. He thus writes to Cadell on the 3d of 
July : — "I intend to tell this little matter to nobody but Lock- 
hart. Perhaps not even to him ; certainly not to J. B., who 
having turned his back on his old political friends, will no 

1 Martial, i. 89 2 See Essay on Chivalry — 1814. 



CASTLE DANGEROUS BEGUN. 573 

longer have a claim to be a secretary in such matters, though 
I shall always be glad to befriend him." James's criticisms 
on Count Kobert had wounded him — the Diary, already quoted, 
shews how severely. The last visit this old ally ever paid at 
Abbotsford, occurred a week or two after. His newspaper had 
by this time espoused openly the cause of the Eef orm Bill — 
and some unpleasant conversation took place on that subject, 
which might well be a sore one for both parties — and not least, 
considering the whole of his personal history, for Mr. Ballan- 
tyne. Next morning, being Sunday, he disappeared abruptly, 
without saying farewell ; and when Scott understood that he 
had signified an opinion that the reading of the Church service, 
with a sermon from South or Barrow, woidd be a poor substi- 
tute for the mystical eloquence of some new idol down the vale, 
he expressed considerable disgust. They never met again in 
this world. In truth, Ballantyne's health also was already 
much broken ; and if Scott had been entirely himself, he would 
not have failed to connect that circumstance in a charitable way 
with this never strong-minded man's recent abandonment of 
his own old terra Jirma, both religious and political. But this 
is a subject on which we have no title to dwell. Sir Walter's 
misgivings about himself, if I read him aright, now rendered 
him desirous of external support ; but this his spirit would fain 
suppress and disguise even from itself. When I again saw him 
on the 13th of this month, he shewed me several sheets of the 
new romance, and told me how he had designed at first to have 
it printed by somebody else than Ballantyne, but that, on re- 
flection, he had shrunk from hurting his feelings on so tender 
a point. I found, however, that he had neither invited nor re- 
ceived any opinion from James as to what he had written, but 
that he had taken an alarm lest he should fall into some blunder 
about the scenery fixed on (which he had never seen but once 
when a schoolboy), and had kept the sheets in proof until I 
should come back and accompany him in a short excursion to 
Lanarkshire. He was anxious in particular to see the tombs 
in the Church of St. Bride, adjoining the site of his "Castle 
Dangerous," of which Mr. Blore had shewn him drawings ; and 
he hoped to pick up some of the minute traditions, in which he 
had always delighted, among the inhabitants of Douglasdale. 

We set out early on the 18th, and ascended the Tweed, pass- 
ing in succession Yair, Ashestiel, Innerleithen, Traquair, and 
many more scenes dear to his early life, and celebrated in his 
writings. The morning was still, but gloomy, and at length 
we had some thunder. It seemed to excite him vividly, — 



574 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

and on coming soon afterwards within view of that remarkable 
edifice (Drochel Castle) on the moorland riclge between Tweed 
and Clyde, which was begun, but never finished, by the Regent 
Morton — a gigantic ruin typical of his ambition — Sir Walter 
could hardly be restrained from making some effort to reach 
it. Morton, too, was a Douglas, and that name was at present 
his charm of charms. We pushed on to Biggar, however, and 
reaching it towards sunset, were detained there for some time 
by want of horses. It was soon discovered who he was ; the 
population of the little town turned out ; and he was evidently 
gratified with their respectful curiosity. It was the first time 
I observed him otherwise than annoyed upon such an occasion. 
Jedburgh, no doubt, hung on his mind, and he might be pleased 
to find that political differences did not interfere everywhere 
with his reception among his countrymen. But I fancy the 
cause lay deeper. 

Another symptom that distressed me during this journey 
was, that he seemed constantly to be setting tasks to his mem- 
ory. It was not as of old, when, if any one quoted a verse, he, 
from the fulness of his heart, could not help repeating the con- 
text. He was obviously in fear that this prodigious engine 
was losing its tenacity, and taking every occasion to rub and 
stretch it. He sometimes failed, and gave it up with miseria 
cogitandi in his eye. At other times he succeeded to admira- 
tion, and smiled as he closed his recital. About a mile beyond 
Biggar, we overtook a parcel of carters, one of whom was mal- 
treating his horse, and Sir Walter called to him from the car- 
riage-window in great indignation. The man looked and spoke 
insolently ; and as we drove on, he used some strong expres- 
sions about what he would have done had this happened within 
the bounds of his sheriffship. As he continued moved in an 
uncommon degree, I said, jokingly, that I wondered his por- 
ridge diet had left his blood so warm, and quoted Prior's 

"Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel 
Upon a mess of water-gruel ? " 

He smiled graciously, and extemporised this variation of the 
next couplet — 

" Yet who shall stand the Sheriff's force, 
If Selkirk carter beats his horse ? " * 

1 " But who shall stand his rage and force, 

If first he rides, then eats his horse ? " Alma. 



EXCURSION TO DOUGLASDALE. 575 

This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he re- 
peated several striking passages both of the Alma and the Sol- 
omon. He was still at this when we reached a longish hill, 
and he got out to walk a little. As we climbed the ascent, he 
leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by a couple of 
beggars, who were, or professed to be, old soldiers both of 
Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg, which 
circumstance alone would have opened Scott's purse-strings, 
though for ex facie a sad old blackguard ; but the fellow had 
recognised his person, as it happened, and in asking an alms, 
bade God bless him fervently by his name. The mendicants 
went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir 
Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick 
firmly on the sod, repeated without break or hesitation Prior's 
verses to the historian Mezeray. That he applied them to 
himself, was touchingly obvious — 

" Whate'er thy countrymen have done, 
By law and wit, by sword and gun, 

In thee is faithfully recited ; 
And all the living world that view 
Thy works, give thee the praises due — 

At once instructed and delighted. 

Yet for the fame of all these deeds, 
What beggar in the Invalides, 

With lameness broke, with blindness smitten, 
Wished ever decently to die, 
To have been either Mezeray — 

Or any monarch he has written ? 
The man in graver tragic known, 
Though his best part long since was done, 

Still on the stage desires to tarry ; 
And he who play'd the harlequin, 
After the jest, still loads the scene, 

Unwilling to retire, though weary." 

We spent the night at the Inn of Douglas Mill, and at an 
early hour next morning proceeded to inspect, under the care 
of one of Lord Douglas' tenants, Mr. Haddow, the Castle, the 
strange old bourg, the Church, long since deserted as a place of 
worship, and the very extraordinary monuments of the most 
heroic and powerful family in the annals of Scotland. That 
works of sculpture equal to any of the fourteenth century in 
Westminster Abbey (for such they certainly were, though much 
mutilated by Cromwell's soldiery) should be found in so remote 
an inland place, attests strikingly the boundless resources of 



576 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

those haughty lords, " whose coronet,'' as Scott says, " so often 
counterpoised the crown." The effigy of the best friend of 
Bruce is among the number, and represents him cross-legged, 
as having fallen in battle with the Saracen, when on his 
way to Jerusalem with the heart of his king. The whole peo- 
ple of the barony gathered round the doors, and two persons 
of extreme old age, — one so old that he well remembered Duke 
Willie — that is to say, the Conqueror of Culloden — were in- 
troduced to tell all their local legends, while Sir Walter ex- 
amined by torchlight these silent witnesses of past greatness. 
It was a strange and melancholy scene, and its recollection 
prompted some passages in Castle Dangerous, which might 
almost have been written at the same time with Lammer- 
moor. The appearance of the village, too, is most truly 
transferred to the novel; and I may say the same of the 
surrounding landscape. We descended into a sort of crypt 
in which the Douglases were buried until about a century 
ago, when there was room for no more ; the leaden coffins 
around the wall being piled on each other, until the lower ones 
had been pressed flat as sheets of pasteboard, while the floor 
itself was entirely paved with others of comparatively modern 
date, on which coronets and inscriptions might be traced. Here 
the silver case that once held the noble heart of the Good Lord 
James himself, is still pointed out. It is in the form of a 
heart, which, in memory of his glorious mission and fate, 
occupies ever since the chief place in the blazon of his 
posterity : — 

" The bloody heart blazed in the van, 
Announcing Douglas' dreaded name." 

This charnel-house, too, will be recognised easily. Of the re- 
doubted Castle itself, there remains but a small detached frag- 
ment, covered with ivy, close to the present mansion ; but he 
hung over it long, or rather sat beside it, drawing outlines on 
the turf, and arranging in his fancy the sweep of the old pre- 
cincts. Before the subjacent and surrounding lake and morass 
were drained, the position must indeed have been the perfect 
model of solitary strength. The crowd had followed us, and 
were lingering about to see him once more as he got into his 
carriage. They attended him to the spot where it was waiting, 
in perfect silence. It was not like a mob, but a procession. 
He was again obviously gratified, and saluted them with an 
earnest yet placid air, as he took his leave. 

It was again a darkish cloudy day, with some occasional 



EXCURSION TO DOUGLASBALE. 577 

mutterings of distant thunder, and perhaps the state of the 
atmosphere told upon Sir Walter's nerves; but I had never 
before seen him so sensitive as he was all the morning after 
this inspection of Douglas. As we drove over the high table- 
land of Lesmahago, he repeated I know not how many verses 
from Winton, Barbour, and Blind Harry, with, I believe, al- 
most every stanza of Dunbar's elegy on the deaths of the 
Makers (poets). It was now that I saw him, such as he paints 
himself in one or two passages of his Diary, but such as his 
companions in the meridian vigour of his life never saw him — 
" the rushing of a brook, or the sighing of the summer breeze, 
bringing the tears into his eyes not unpleasantly." Bodily 
weakness laid the delicacy of the organisation bare, over which 
he had prided himself in wearing a sort of half-stoical mask. 
High and exalted feelings, indeed, he had never been able to 
keep concealed, but he had shrunk from exhibiting to human 
eye the softer and gentler emotions which now trembled to the 
surface. He strove against it even now, and presently came 
back from the Lament of the Makers, to his Douglases, and 
chanted, rather than repeated, in a sort of deep and glowing, 
though not distinct recitative, his first favourite among all the 
ballads, — 

" It was about the Laimnas tide, 

When husbandmen do win their day, 
That the Doughty Douglas bownde him to ride 
To England to drive a prey," — 

down to the closing stanzas, which again left him in tears, — 

" My wound is deep — I fain would sleep — 
Take thou the vanguard of the three, 
And hide me beneath the bracken-bush, 
That grows on yonder lily lee." 

We reached my brother's house on the Clyde some time be- 
fore the dinner-hour, and Sir Walter appeared among the 
friends who received him there with much of his old grace- 
ful composure of courtesy. He walked about a little — was 
pleased with the progress made in some building operations, and 
especially commended my brother for having given his bridge 
" ribs like Bothwell." Greenshields was at hand, and he talked 
to him cheerfully, while the sculptor devoured his features, 
as under a solemn sense that they were before his eyes for the 
last time. My brother had taken care to have no company at 
dinner except two or three near neighbours, with whom Sir 
2p 



578 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Walter had been familiar through life, and whose entreaties it 
had been impossible to resist. One of these was the late Mr. 
Elliott Lockhart of Cleghorn and Borthwickbrae — long Mem- 
ber of Parliament for Selkirkshire — the same whose anti- 
reform address had been preferred to the Sheriff's by the 
free-holders of that county in the preceding March. But, 
alas ! very soon after that address was accepted, Borthwick- 
brae had a shock of paralysis as severe as any his old friend 
had as yet sustained. He, too, had rallied beyond expectation, 
and his family were more hopeful, perhaps, than the other's 
dared to be. Sir Walter and he had not met for a few years — 
not since they rode side by side, as I well remember, on a 
merry day's sport at Bowhill ; and I need not tell any one who 
knew Borthwickbrae, that a finer or more gallant specimen of 
the Border gentleman than he was in his prime, never cheered 
a hunting-field. When they now met (Jieu quantum mutati!) 
each saw his own case glassed in the other, and neither of 
their manly hearts could well contain itself as they embraced. 
Each exerted himself to the utmost — indeed far too much, 
and they were both tempted to transgress the laws of their 
physicians. 

At night Scott promised to visit Cleghorn on his way home, 
but next morning, at breakfast, came a messenger to inform us 
that the laird, on returning to his own house, fell down in 
another fit, and was now despaired of. Immediately, although 
he had intended to remain two days, Sir Walter drew my 
brother aside, and besought him to lend him horses as far 
as Lanark, for that he must set off with the least possible 
delay. He would listen to no persuasions. — "No, William," 
he said, " this is a sad warning. I must home to work while 
it is called day ; for the night cometh when no man can work. 
I put that text, many a year ago, on my dial-stone ; but it often 
preached in vain." 1 

We started accordingly, and making rather a forced march, 
reached Abbotsford the same night. During the journey, he 
was more silent than I ever before found him ; he seemed to 
be wrapt in thought, and was but seldom roused to take notice 
of any object we passed. The little he said was mostly about 
Castle Dangerous, which he now seemed to feel sure he could 
finish in a fortnight, though his observation of the locality 

1 This dial-stone, which used to stand in front of the old cottage, and 
is now in the centre of the garden, is inscribed, NTS TAP EPXETAI. The 
same Greek words made the legend on Dr. Johnson's watch : and he had 
probably taken the hint from Boswell. 



LITEBARY WORKS. 579 

must needs cost the re-writing of several passages in the chap- 
ters already put into type. 

For two or three weeks he bent himself sedulously to his 
task — and concluded both Castle Dangerous and the long- 
suspended Count Kobert. By this time he had submitted to 
the recommendation of all his medical friends, and agreed to 
spend the coming winter away from Abbotsford, among new 
scenes, in a more genial climate, and above all (so he promised), 
in complete abstinence from all literary labour. When Cap- 
tain Basil Hall understood that he had resolved on wintering 
at Naples (where, as has been mentioned, his son Charles was 
attached to the British Legation), it occurred to the zealous 
sailor that on such an occasion as this all thoughts of political 
difference ought to be dismissed, — and he, unknown to Scott, 
addressed a letter to Sir James Graham, then First Lord of the 
Admiralty, stating the condition of his friend's health, and 
his proposed plan, and suggesting that it would be a fit and 
graceful thing for the King's Government to place a frigate at 
his disposal. Sir James replied that it afforded his Royal 
Master, as well as himself, the sincerest satisfaction to comply 
with this hint; and that whenever Sir Walter found it con- 
venient to come southwards, a vessel should be prepared for 
his reception. Nothing could be handsomer than the way in 
which all this matter was arranged, and Scott, deeply gratified, 
exclaimed that things were yet in the hands of gentlemen ; 
but that he feared they had been undermining the state of 
society which required such persons as themselves to be at 
the head. 

He had no wish, however, to leave Abbotsford until the 
approach of winter ; and having dismissed his Tales, seemed to 
say to himself that he would enjoy his dear valley for the in- 
tervening weeks, draw friends about him, revisit all the famil- 
iar scenes in his neighbourhood once more ; and if he were 
never to come back, store himself with the most agreeable rec- 
ollections in his power, and so conduct himself as to bequeath 
to us who surrounded him a last stock of gentle impressions. 
He continued to work a little at his notes and prefaces, the 
Reliquiae of Oldbuck, and a private tome entitled Sylva Abbots- 
f ordiensis, but did not fatigue himself ; and when once all plans 
were settled, and all cares in so far as possible set aside, his 
health and spirits certainly rallied most wonderfully. He had 
settled that my wife and I should dine at Abbotsford, and he 
and Anne at Chief swood, day about ; and this rule was seldom 
departed from. Both at home and in the cottage he was will- 



580 LIFE OF Sin WALTER SCOTT. 

ing to have a few guests, so they were not strangers. Mr. 
James (the accomplished and popular novelist) and his lady, 
who this season lived at Maxpoffle, and Mr. Archdeacon Wil- 
liams, 1 who was spending his vacation at Melrose, were welcome 
additions, and frequently so, to his accustomed circle of the 
Scotts of Harden, the Pringies of Whytbank and Clifton, the 
Eussels of Ashestiel, the Brewsters, and the Fergussons. Sir 
Walter observed the prescribed diet, on the whole, pretty accu- 
rately ; and seemed, when in the midst of his family and 
friends, always tranquil — sometimes cheerful. On one or 
two occasions he was even gay ; particularly, I think, when 
the weather was so fine as to tempt us to dine in the marble 
hall at Abbotsford, or at an early hour under the trees at 
Chiefswood. 

He had the gratification of a visit from Mr. Adolphus, and 
accompanied him one day as far as Oakwood and the Linns of 
Ettrick. He also received and made several little excursions 
with the great artist, Turner, whose errand to Scotland was 
connected with the collective edition of his Poems. One morn- 
ing, in particular, he carried Mr. Turner, with Mr. Skene and 
myself, to Smailholm Crags ; and it was in lounging about 
them, while the painter did his sketch, that he told his " kind 
Samaritan " how the habit of lying on the turf there among 
the sheep and lambs, when a lame infant, had given his mind 
a peculiar tenderness for those animals, which it had ever 
since retained. He seemed to enjoy the scene of his childhood 
— yet there was many a touch of sadness both in his eye and 
his voice. He then carried us to Dryburgh, but excused him- 
self from attending Mr. Turner into the enclosure. Skene and 
I perceived that it would be better for us to leave him alone, 
and we both accompanied Turner. Lastly, the painter must 
not omit Bemerside. The good laird and lady were of course 
flattered, and after walking about a little Avhile among the huge 
old trees that surround their tower, we ascended to, I think, 
the third tier of its vaulted apartments, and had luncheon in 
a stately hall, arched also in stone, but with well-sized windows 
(as being out of harm's way) duly blazoned with shields and 
crests, and the time-honoured motto, Betide, Betide — being 
the first words of a prophetic couplet ascribed to Thomas the 
Rhymer : — 

" Betide, betide, whate'er betide, 
There shall be Haigs in Bemerside." 

!The Archdeacon, Charles Scott's early tutor, was at this time Rector 
of the New Edinburgh Academy. 



EXCUBSIONS. 581 

Mr. Turner's sketch, of this picturesque Peel, and its " brother- 
hood of venerable trees," is probably familiar to most of my 
readers. 

Mr. Cadell brought the artist to Abbotsford, and was also of 
this Bemerside party. I must not omit to record how grate- 
fully all Sir Walter's family felt the delicate and watchful ten- 
derness of Mr. Cadell's conduct on this occasion. He so man- 
aged that the Novels just finished should remain in types, but 
not thrown off until the author should have departed ; so as to 
give opportunity for revising and abridging them. He might 
well be the bearer of cheering news as to their greater concerns, 
for the sale of the Magnum had, in spite of political turbu- 
lences and distractions, gone on successfully. But he probably 
strained a point to make things appear still better than they 
really were. He certainly spoke so as to satisfy his friend 
that he need give himself no sort of uneasiness about the pecu- 
niary results of idleness and travel. It was about this time that 
we observed Sir Walter beginning to entertain the notion that 
his debts were paid off. By degrees, dwelling on this fancy, 
he believed in it fully and implicitly. It was a gross delusion 
— but neither Cadell nor any one else had the heart to disturb 
it by any formal statement of figures. It contributed greatly 
more than any circumstance besides to soothe Sir Walter's feel- 
ings, when it became at last necessary that he should tear him- 
self from his land and his house, and the trees which he had 
nursed. And with all that was done and forborne, the hour 
when it came was a most heavy one. 

Very near the end there came some unexpected things to cast a 
sunset brilliancy over Abbotsford. His son, the Major, arrived 
with tidings that he had obtained leave of absence from his 
regiment, and should be in readiness to sail with his father. 
This was a mighty relief to us all, on Miss Scott's account as 
well as his, for my occupations did not permit me to think of 
going with him, and there was no other near connexion at 
hand. But Sir Walter was delighted — indeed, dearly as he 
loved all his children, he had a pride in the Major that stood 
quite by itself, and the hearty approbation which looked through 
his eyes whenever turned on him, sparkled brighter than ever 
as his own physical strength decayed. Young Walter had on 
this occasion sent down a horse or two to winter at Abbotsford. 
One was a remarkably tall and handsome animal, jet black all 
over, and when the Major appeared on it one morning, equipped 
for a little sport with the greyhounds, Sir Walter insisted on 
being put upon Douce Davie, and conducted as far as the Cauld- 



582 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

shields Loch to see the day's work begun. He halted on the 
high bank to the north of the lake, and I remained to hold his 
bridle, in case of any frisk on the part of the Covenanter at 
the " tunralt great of dogs and men." We witnessed a very 
pretty chase or two on the opposite side of the water — but his 
eye followed always the tall black steed and his rider. The 
father might well assure Lady Davy, that " a handsomer fel- 
low never put foot into stirrup." But when he took a very 
high wall of loose stones, at which everybody else craned, as 
easily and elegantly as if it had been a puddle in his stride, 
the old man's rapture was extreme. " Look at him ! " said he 
— " only look at him ! Xow, isn't he a fine fellow ? " — This 
was the last time, I believe, that Sir Walter mounted on horse- 
back. 

On the 17th of September the old splendour of Abbotsford 
was, after a long interval, and for the last time, revived. Cap- 
tain James Glencairn Bums, son of the poet, had come home 
from India, and Sir Walter invited him (with his wife, and 
their cicerones Mr. and Mrs. M'Diarrnid of Dumfries) to 
spend -a day under his roof. The neighbouring gentry were 
assembled, and having his son to help him, Sir Walter did most 
gracefully the honours of the table. 

On the 20th Mrs. Lockhart set out for London to prepare 
for her father's reception there ; and on the following day Mr. 
Wordsworth and his daughter arrived from Westmoreland to 
take farewell of him. This was a very fortunate circumstance ; 
nothing could have gratified Sir Walter more, or sustained him 
better, if he needed any support from without. On the 22d — all 
his arrangements being completed, and Laidlaw having received 
a paper of instructions, the last article of which repeats the cau- 
tion to be -very careful of the dogs " — these two great poets, 
who had through life loved each other well, and, in spite of 
very different theories as to art, appreciated each other's genius 
more justly than inferior spirits ever did either of them, spent 
the morning together in a visit to Newark. Hence Yarrow 
Revisited — the last of the three poems by which Wordsworth 
has connected his name to all time with the most romantic of 
Scottish streams. 

Sitting that evening in the library, Sir Walter said a good 
deal about the singularity that Fielding and Smollett had both 
been driven abroad by declining health, and never returned ; — 
which circumstance, though his language was rather cheerful 
at this time, he had often before alluded to in a darker fashion ; 
and Mr. Wordsworth expressed his regret that neither of those 



VISIT OF WORDSWORTH. 583 

great masters of romance appeared to have been surrounded 
with any due marks of respect in the close of life. I happened 
to observe that Cervantes, on his last journey to Madrid, met 
with an incident which seemed to have given him no common 
satisfaction. Sir Walter did not remember the passage, and 
desired me to find it out in the life by Pellicer which was at 
hand, and translate it. I did so, and he listened with lively 
though pensive interest. Our friend Allan, the historical 
painter, had also come out that day from Edinburgh, and he 
since told me that he remembers nothing he ever saw with so 
much sad pleasure as the attitudes and aspect of Scott and 
Wordsworth as the story went on. Mr. Wordsworth was at 
that time, I should notice — though indeed his noble stanzas 
tell it — in but a feeble state of general health. He was, more- 
over, suffering so much from some malady in his eyes, that he 
wore a deep green shade over them. Thus he sat between Sir 
Walter and his daughter : absit omen — but it was no wonder 
that Allan thought as much of Milton as of Cervantes. The 
anecdote of the young student's raptures on discovering that 
lie had been riding all day with the author of Don Quixote, is 
introduced in the Preface to Count Robert and Castle Danger- 
ous, which — (for I may not return to the subject) — came 
out at the close of November in four volumes, as the Fourth 
Series of Tales of My Landlord. 

The following Sonnet was, no doubt, composed by Mr. 
Wordsworth that same evening : — 

" A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain, 
Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light 
Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height : 
Spirits of power assembled there complain 
For kindred power departing from their sight ; 
While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, 
Saddens his voice again, and yet again. 
Lift up your hearts, ye mourners ! for the might 
Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes ; 
Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue 
Than sceptred King or laurelled Conqueror knows, 
Follow this wondrous potentate. Be true, 
Ye winds of Ocean, and the Midland Sea, 
Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope." 

Early on the 23d of September 1831, Sir Walter left Abbots- 
ford, attended by his daughter Anne and myself, and we 
reached London by easy stages on the 28th, having spent one 
day at Rokeby. I have nothing to mention of this journey 



584 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

except that notwithstanding all his infirmities, he would not 
pass any object to which he had ever attached special interest, 
without getting out of the carriage to revisit it. His anxiety 
(for example) about the gigantic British or Danish efhgy in the 
churchyard at Penrith, which we had all ' seen dozens of times 
before, seemed as great as if not a year had fled since 1797. 
It may be supposed that his parting with Mr. Morritt was a 
grave one. Finding that he had left the ring he then usually 
wore, behind him at one of the inns on the road, he wrote to 
Morritt to make enquiries after it, as it had been dug out of 
the ruins of Hermitage Castle, and probably belonged of yore 
to one of the ." Dark Knights of Liddesdale ; " and if recovered, 
to keep it until he should come back to reclaim it, but, in the 
meantime, to wear it for his sake. The ring, which is a broad 
belt of silver with an angel holding the heart of Douglas, was 
found, and having been worn to the end of life by Mr. Morritt, 
was by him bequeathed to his friend's grandson. 

Sir Walter arrived in London in the midst of the Lord's de- 
bates on the second Reform Bill, and the ferocious demonstra- 
tions of the populace on its rejection were in part witnessed by 
him. He saw the houses of several of the chief Tories, and 
above all, that of the Duke of Wellington, shattered and al- 
most sacked. He heard of violence offered to the persons of 
some of his own noble friends ; and having been invited to 
attend the christening of the infant heir of Buccleuch, whose 
godfather the King had proposed to be, he had the pain to 
understand that the ceremony must be adjourned, because it 
was not considered safe for his Majesty to visit, for such a 
purpose, the palace of one of his most amiable as well as 
illustrious peers. 

During his stay, which was till the 23d of October, Sir Wal- 
ter called on many of his old friends ; but he accepted of no 
hospitalities except breakfasting once with Sir Robert Inglis 
on Clapham Common, and twice with Lady Gifford at Roe- 
hampton. Usually he worked a little in the morning at notes 
for the Magnum. 

Dr. Eobert Fergusson (now one of her Majesty's physicians), 
one of the family with which Sir Walter had lived all his days 
in such "brother-like affection, saw him constantly while he 
remained in the Regent's Park; and though neither the in- 
valid nor his children could fancy any other medical advice 
necessary, it was only due to Fergusson that some of his sen- 
iors should be called in occasionally with him. Sir Henry Hal- 
ford (whom Scott reverenced as the friend of Baillie) and Dr. 









DEPARTURE FROM ABBOTSFORD. 585 

Henry Holland (an esteemed friend of his own) came accord- 
ingly ; and all the three concurred in recognising evidence 
that there was incipient disease in the brain. There were still, 
however, such symptoms of remaining vigour, that they flat- 
tered themselves, if their patient would submit to a total inter- 
mission of all literary labour during some considerable space 
of time, the malady might yet be arrested. When they left 
him after the first inspection, they withdrew into an adjoining 
room, and on soon rejoining him found that in the interim he had 
wheeled his chair into a dark corner, so that he might see their 
faces without their being able to read his. When he was in- 
formed of the comparatively favourable views they entertained, 
he expressed great thankfulness ; promised to obey all their 
directions as to diet and repose most scrupulously ; and he did 
not conceal from them, that " he had feared insanity and feared 
them." 

The following are extracts from his Diary : — " London, Octo- 
ber 2, 1831. — I have been very ill, and if not quite unable to 
write, I have been unfit to do it. I have wrought, however, 
at two Waverley things, but not well. A total prostration of 
bodily strength is my chief complaint. I cannot walk half a 
mile. There is, besides, some mental confusion, with the 
extent of which I am not, perhaps, fully acquainted. I am 
perhaps setting. I am myself inclined to think so, and like a 
day that has been admired as a fine one, the light of it sets 
down amid mists and storms. I neither regret nor fear the 
approach of death, if it is coming. I would compound for a 
little pain instead of this heartless muddiness of mind. The 
expense of this journey, &c. will be considerable; yet these 
heavy burdens could be easily borne if I were to be the 
Walter Scott I once was — but the change is great. And the 
ruin which I fear involves that of my country. I fancy the 
instances of Euthanasia are not in very serious cases very 
common. Instances there certainly are among the learned and 
the unlearned — Dr. Black, Tom Purdie. I should like, if it 
pleased God, to slip off in such a quiet way; but we must take 
what fate sends. I have not warm hopes of being myself again." 

Sir Walter seemed to enjoy having one or two friends to 
meet him at dinner — and a few more in the evenings. Among 
others he thus saw, more than once, Lord Montagu and his 
family, the Marchioness of Stafford (afterwards Duchess of 
Sutherland), the Macleods of Macleod, Lady Davy, Mr. Rogers, 
Lord Mahon, Mr. Murray, Lord Dudley, Lord Melville, the 
Bishop of Exeter, Lord Ashley, Sir David Wilkie, Mr. Thomas 



586 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Moore, Mr. Milman, Mr. Washington Irving, and his three 
medical friends. At this time the Reform Bill for Scotland 
was in discussion in the House of Commons. Mr. Croker 
made a very brilliant speech in opposition to it, and was not 
sorry to have it said, that he had owed his inspiration, in no 
small degree, to having risen from the table at which Scott 
sat by his side. But the most regular of the evening visitors 
was, I think, Sir James Mackintosh. That master of every 
social charm and grace was himself in very feeble health ; and 
whatever might have been the auguries of others, it struck me 
that there was uppermost with him at every parting the antici- 
pation that they might never meet again. Sir James's kind 
assiduity was the more welcome, that his appearance banished 
the politics of the hour, on which his old friend's thoughts were 
too apt to brood. Their conversation, wherever it might begin, 
was sure to fasten ere long on Lochaber. 

Before quitting home Scott had directed a humble monu- 
ment to be prepared for the grave of Helen Walker, the origi- 
nal of Jeanie Deans, in the churchyard of Irongray. On the 
18th he penned the epitaph now inscribed there — and also 
the pathetic farewell in the last page of the preface to Count 
Robert of Paris. 

On the 19th, the Hon. Henry Duncan, R.N., store-keeper of 
the Ordnance, who had taken a great deal of trouble in arrang- 
ing matters for the voyage, called on Sir Walter to introduce 
to him Captain, now Sir Hugh Pigot, the commanding-officer 
of the Barhain — who expected to sail on the 24th. 

" Oct. 23. — Misty morning — looks like a yellow fog, which 
is the curse of London. I would hardly take my share of it 
for a share of its wealth and its curiosity — a vile double 
distilled fog, of the most intolerable kind. Children scarce 
stirring yet, but Baby and Macaw beginning their Macaw 
notes." — Dr. Fergusson, calling early, found Sir Walter with 
this page of his Diary before him. " As he was still working 
at his MS." says the Doctor, " I offered to retire, but was not 
permitted. On my saying I had come to take leave of him 
before he quitted England, he exclaimed, with much excite- 
ment — i England is no longer a place for an honest man. I 
shall not live to find it so ; you may.' He then broke out into 
the details of a very favourite superstition of his, that the 
middle of every century had always been marked by some 
great convulsion or calamity in this island. The alterations 
which had taken place in his mind and person since I had seen 
him, three years before, were very apparent. The expression 



LONDON. 587 

of the countenance and the play of features were changed by 
slight palsy of one cheek. His utterance was so thick and 
indistinct as to make it very difficult for any but those ac- 
customed to hear it, to gather his meaning. His gait was less 
firm and assured than ever; but his power of self-command, 
his social tact, and his benevolent courtesy, the habits of a life, 
remained untouched by a malady which had obscured the higher 
powers of his intellect." 

After breakfast, Sir Walter, accompanied by his son and 
both his daughters, set off for Portsmouth ; and Captain Basil 
Hall had the kindness to precede them by an early coach, and 
prepare everything for their reception at the hotel. In changing 
horses at G-uilford, Sir Walter got out of his carriage, and very 
narrowly escaped being run over by a stage-coach. Of all " the 
habits of a life," none clung longer to him than his extreme 
repugnance to being helped in anything. It was late before he 
came to lean, as a matter of course, when walking, upon any 
one but Tom Purdie ; and, in the sequel, this proud feeling, 
coupled with increasing tendency to abstraction of mind, often 
exposed him to imminent hazard. 

The Barham could not sail for a week. During this interval, 
Sir Walter scarcely stirred from his hotel, being unwilling to 
display his infirmities to the crowd of gazers who besieged him 
whenever he appeared. He received, however, deputations of 
the literary and scientific societies of the town, and all other 
visitors, with his usual ease and courtesy : and he might well 
be gratified with the extraordinary marks of deference paid 
him by the official persons who could in any way contribute 
to his comfort. The first Lord of the Admiralty, Sir James 
Graham, and the Secretary, Sir John Barrow, both appeared in 
person, to ascertain that nothing had been neglected for his 
accommodation on board the frigate. The Admiral, Sir Thomas 
Foley, placed his barge at his disposal ; the Governor, Sir Colin 
Campbell, and all the chief officers, naval and military, seemed 
to strive with each other in attention to him and his companions. 
In Hall's Third Series of Fragments of Voyages, some interest- 
ing^ details have long since been made public : — it may be 
sufficient to say here that had Captain Pigot and his gallant 
shipmates been appointed to convey a Prince of the Blood, more 
anxious and delicate exertions could not have been made, either 
in altering the interior of the vessel, so as to meet the wants 
of the passengers, or afterwards, throughout the voyage, in 
rendering it easy, comfortable, and as far as might be, interest- 
ing and amusing. 



588 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

On the 29th, the wind changed, and the Barham got under 
weigh. After a few days, when they had passed the Bay of 
Biscay, Sir Walter ceased to be annoyed with seasickness, and 
sat most of his time on deck, enjoying apparently the air, the 
scenery, and above all the ship itself, the beautiful discipline 
practised in all things, and the martial exercises of the men. 
In Sir Hugh Pigot, Lieutenant (now Admiral Sir Baldwin) 
Walker, the physician, Dr. Liddell, and I believe in many 
others of the officers, he had highly intelligent as well as 
polished companions. The course was often altered, for the 
express purpose of giving him a glimpse of some famous 
place; and it was only the temptation of a singularly pro- 
pitious breeze that prevented a halt at Algiers. 

On the 20th November, they came upon "that remarkable 
phenomenon, the sudden creation of a submarine volcano, which 
bore, during its very brief date, the name of Graham's Island. 
Four months had elapsed since it " arose from out the azure 
main " — and in a few days more it disappeared. " Already," 
as Dr. Davy says, " its crumbling masses were falling to pieces 
from the pressure of the hand or foot." Yet nothing could 
prevent Sir Walter from landing on it — and in a letter of the 
following week he thus describes his adventure to Mr. Skene : 
■ — " Not being able to borrow your fingers, those of the Cap- 
tain's clerk have been put in requisition for the enclosed sketch, 
and the notes adjoined are as accurate as can be expected from 
a hurried visit. You have a view of the island, very much as 
it shews at present ; but nothing is more certain than that it is 
on the eve of a very important change, though in what respect 
is doubtful. I saw a portion of about five or six feet in height 
give way under the feet of one of our companions on the very 
ridge of the southern corner, and become completely annihi- 
lated, giving us some anxiety for the fate of our friend, till the 
dust and confusion of the dispersed pinnacle had subsided. 
You know my old talents for horsemanship. Finding the 
earth, or what seemed a substitute for it, sink at every step up 
to the knee, so as to make walking for an infirm and heavy 
man nearly impossible, I mounted the shoulders of an able and 
willing seaman, and by dint of his exertions, rode nearly to the 
top of the island. I would have given a great deal for you, my 
friend, the frequent and willing supplier of my defects ; but on 
this journey, though undertaken late in life, I have found, from 
the benevolence of my companions, that when one man's 
strength was insufficient to supply my deficiencies, I had the 
willing aid of twenty if it could be useful. I have sent you 



VOYAGE IN THE BARHAM. 589 

one of the largest blocks of lava which. I could find on the 
islet." 

At Malta, which he reached on the 22d, Sir Walter found 
several friends of former days. The Eight Honourable John 
Hookham Frere had been resident there for several years, the 
captive of the enchanting climate and the romantic monuments 
of the old chivalry. 1 Sir John Stocldart, the Chief Judge, had 
known the Poet ever since the days of Lasswade ; and the 
Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel Seymour Bathurst, had often 
met him under the roof of his father, the late Earl Bathurst. 
Captain Dawson, husband to Lord Kinnedder's eldest daughter, 
was of the garrison, and Sir Walter felt as if he were about to 
meet a daughter of his own in the Euphemia Erskine who had 
so often sat upon his knee. She immediately joined him, and 
insisted on being allowed to partake his quarantine. Lastly, 
Dr. John Davy, the brother of his illustrious friend, was at 
the head of the medical staff ; and this gentleman's presence 
was welcome indeed to the Major and Miss Scott, as well as 
to their father, for he had already begun to be more negligent 
as to his diet, and they dreaded his removal from the skilful 
watch of Dr. Liddell. 

Nor less so was the society of Mrs. Davy — the daughter of 
an old acquaintance and brother advocate, and indeed almost 
a next-door neighbour in Edinburgh (Mr. Fletcher). This 
lady's private journal, Sir Walter's own diary (though hardly 
legible), and several letters to Laidlaw and myself, tell of ex- 
traordinary honours lavished on him throughout his stay. The 
Lieutenant-Governor had arranged that he should not be driven 
to the ordinary lazaretto, but to Fort Manuel, where apartments 
were ready for him and his party ; and Mrs. Davy, accompany- 
ing Colonel and Mrs. Bathurst on their first visit there, says, 
the number of boats and the bustle about the sombre landing- 
place of the Marsa Muscat "gave token even then" — that is, 
in the midst of the terror for the cholera — " of an illustrious 
arrival." The quarantine lasted nine days, but Sir Walter, 
she says, " held a daily levee " to receive the numerous visitors 
that flocked to converse with him across the barrier — which 
Mr. Frere, notorious for absence of mind, more than once all 
but transgressed. On being set at liberty, Sir Walter removed 
to a hotel close to Dr. Davy's residence in the Strada Ponente. 
He, chiefly under Mrs. Davy's escort, visited the knightly 
antiquities of La Valetta, the Church of St. John and its rich 
monuments, the deserted palaces and libraries of the heroic 

1 Mr. Frere died there in 1846. 



590 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

brotherhood, — with especial interest the spot where the 
famous pirate Dragut met his death, and the Via Stretta, where 
the young knights of Malta used to fight their duels. " This 
town," he said to Mrs. Davy, " is quite like a dream — it will 
go hard but I make something of this:" — and in his letters 
he speaks repeatedly of his purpose to frame a new work con- 
nected with the Order. But the hospitalities of Malta were 
too much for him. The garrison-officers got up a ball in his 
honour, and the dignitaries gave dinner after dinner. He, like 
most persons afflicted with paralytic disease, had begun to lose 
command over himself at table, and a very slight neglect of 
his physician's orders was now sure to infer a penalty. He 
seems to have escaped another fit of apoplexy only by the 
promptitude of Dr. Davy's lancet : and his children were well 
pleased Avhen he consented to re-embark in the Barham for 
Naples on the 14th December. Mrs. Davy speaks much as 
Dr. Fergusson had done in London, of the change in his ap- 
pearance — and she gives some sad instances of his failing 
memory, especially that, when extolling certain novels, he 
could not bring out their writer's name, but only, after a pain- 
ful pause, " that Irish lady." But Mrs. Davy, too, speaks, like 
Fergusson, of the unaltered courtesy of his demeanour on all 
occasions, and the warmth of affection that was evident in 
every allusion to old friends and ties. She told him, at their 
last meeting, that her husband was writing Sir Humphrey's 
Life, — "I am glad of it," said Sir Walter; " I hope his mother 
lived to see his greatness." 

On the 17th the Barham reached Naples, and Sir Walter 
found his son Charles ready to receive him. The quarantine 
was cut short by the courtesy of the King, and the travellers 
established themselves in an apartment of the Palazzo Cara- 
manico. Here, again, the British Minister, Mr. Hill (now 
Lord Berwick), and the English nobility and gentry then re- 
siding in Naples, did whatever kindness and respect could sug- 
gest; nor were the natives less attentive. The Marquis of 
Hertford, the Hon. Keppel Craven, the Hon. William Ashley 
and his lady, Sir George Talbot, the venerable Matthias (author 
of The Pursuits of Literature), Mr. Auldjo (celebrated for his 
ascent of Mont Blanc), and Dr. Hogg, who has since published 
an account of his travels in the East — appear to have, in their 
various ways, contributed whatever they could to his comfort 
and amusement. But the person of whom he saw most was the 
late Sir William Gell, who had long been condemned to live 
in Italy by ailments and infirmities not dissimilar to his own. 



MALTA — NAPLES. 591 

Though he remained here until the middle of April, the 
reader will pardon me for giving but few of the details to which 
I have had access. He was immediately elected into the chief 
literary societies of the place ; and the king gave him unusual 
facilities in the use of all its libraries and museums. An an- 
cient MS. of the Romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton being 
pointed out to him, he asked and obtained permission to have 
a transcript; and one was executed in his own apartments. 
He also expressed great curiosity as to the local ballads and 
popular tracts, chiefly occupied with the exploits of bandits, 
and collected enough of them to form about a dozen volumes, 
which he took a fancy to have bound in vellum. Sir William 
Gell was his cicerone to most of the celebrated spots in the 
city and its vicinity — but soon discovered that he felt compara- 
tively little interest in anything that he saw, unless he could 
connect it somehow with traditions or legends of mediaeval 
history or romance, or trace some resemblance to the scenery 
of familiar associations at home. Thus, amidst the chestnut 
forest near Psestuni, he was heard repeating Jock of Hazeldean 
— and again, in looking down on the Lucrine Lake, Baiae, Mise- 
num, and Averno, he suddenly pronounced, " in a grave tone 
and with great emphasis," some fragment of a Jacobite ditty — 

" 'Tis up the rocky mountain and down the mossy glen, 
We darena gang a milking for Charlie and his men." 

At Pompeii alone did his thoughts seem to be wholly com- 
manded by the realities before him. There he had himself car- 
ried from house to house, and examined everything leisurely ; but 
said little, except ever and anon in an audible whisper, " The 
city of the dead — the city of the dead ! " 

Meantime he more and more lost sight of the necessary re- 
strictions — resumed too much of the usual habits in partici- 
pating of splendid hospitalities, and, worst of all, resumed his 
pen. No persuasion could arrest him. He wrote several small 
tales, the subjects taken from the Newgate history of the Nea- 
politan banditti ; and covered many quires with chapter after 
chapter of a romance connected with the Knights of St. John. 

The MS. of these painful days is hardly to be deciphered by 
any effort ; but he often spoke as well pleased with what he 
was doing, and confident that, on reaching Scotland again, he 
should have produced welcome materials for the press — though 
on many other occasions his conversation intimated apprehen- 
sions of a far different order, and he not only prognosticated 



592 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

that his end was near, but expressed alarm that he might not 
live to finish the journey homewards. 

He continued, however, to be haunted with a mere delusion 

— on the origin of which I can offer no guess. — " In our morn- 
ing drives " (writes Gell) " Sir Walter always noticed a favour- 
ite dog of mine, which was usually in the carriage, and gener- 
ally patted the animal's head for some time, saying — 'poor boy 

— poor boy.' 'I have got at home,' said he, 'two very fine 
favourite dogs, — so large, that I am almost afraid they look 
too handsome and too feudal for my diminished income. I am 
very fond of them, but they are so large it was impossible to 
take them with me.' — He came one morning rather early to 
my house, to tell me he was sure I should he pleased at some 
good luck which had befallen him, and of which he had just 
received notice. This was, as he said, an account from his 
friends in England, that his last works, Robert of Paris and 
Castle Dangerous, had gone on to a second edition. He told 
me in the carriage that he felt quite relieved by his letters ; 
' for,' said he, ' I could have never slept straight in my coffin 
till I had satisfied every claim against me.' ' And now,' added 
he to the dog, ' my poor boy, I shall have my house, and my 
estate round it, free, and I may keep my dogs as big and as 
many as I choose, without fear of reproach.' — He told me, that, 
being relieved from debt, and no longer forced to write for 
money, he longed to turn to poetry again. I encouraged him, 
and asked him why he had ever relinquished poetry ? — ' Be- 
cause Byron bet me,' said he, pronouncing the word, beat, short. 
I rejoined, that I thought I could remember by heart as many 
passages of his poetry as of Byron's. He replied — ' That may 
be, but he bet me out of the field in the description of the 
strong passions, and in deep-seated knowledge of the human 
heart ; so I gave up poetry for the time.' He became ex- 
tremely curious about Rhodes, and having chosen for his poeti- 
cal subject the chivalrous story of the slaying of the dragon 
by De Gozon, and the stratagems and valour with which he 
conceived and executed his purpose, he was quite delighted to 
hear that I had seen the skeleton of this real or reported 
dragon, which yet remains secured by large iron staples to 
the vaulted roof of one of the gates of the city." 

From this time, whoever was near him often heard, that 
when he reached Scotland, it would be to re-enter on the 
unfettered use and administration of his estate. He even 
wrote to Mrs. Scott of Harden bespeaking her presence at a 
little festival which he designed to hold within a few months 



NOTES BY WILLIAM GELL. 593 

at Abbotsford, in celebration of his release from all difficul- 
ties. All this while he sent letters frequently to his daughter 
Sophia, Mr. Cadell, Mr. Laidlaw, and myself. Some were of 
a very melancholy cast — for the dream about his debts was 
occasionally broken : in general, however, these his last letters 
tell the same story of delusive hopes both as to health and 
wealth, of satisfaction in the resumption of his pen, of eager- 
ness to be once more at Abbotsford, and of affectionate anxiety 
about the friends he was there to rejoin. Every one of those 
to Laidlaw has something about the poor people and the dogs. 
One to myself conveyed his desire that he might be set down 
for "something as handsome as I liked" in a subscription 
then thought of for the Ettrick Shepherd; who that spring 
visited London, and was in no respect improved by his visit. 
Another to my wife bade her purchase a grand pianoforte 
which he wished to present to Miss Cadell, his bookseller's 
daughter. The same generous spirit was shewn in many other 
communications. 

It had been his intention not to leave the Mediterranean 
without seeing Ehodes himself — but he suddenly dropt this 
scheme, on learning that his friend Sir Frederick Adam, Gov- 
ernor of the Ionian Islands, who had invited him to Corfu, was 
ordered to India. Erom that hour his whole thoughts were 
fixed on home — and his companions soon ceased from oppos- 
ing his inclinations. Miss Scott was no doubt the more will- 
ing to yield, as having received intelligence of the death of 
her nephew, the "Hugh Littlejohn" of the Grandfather's 
Tales — which made her anxious about her sister. But indeed, 
since her father would again work, what good end could it 
serve to keep him from working at his own desk ? And since 
all her entreaties, and the warnings of foreign doctors, proved 
alike unavailing as to the regulation of his diet, what remain- 
ing chance could there be on that score, unless from replacing 
him under the eye of the friendly physicians whose authority 
had formerly seemed to have due influence on his mind ? He 
had wished to return by the route of the Tyrol and Germany, 
partly for the sake of the remarkable chapel and monuments 
of the old Austrian princes at Innspruck, and the feudal ruins 
upon the Rhine, but chiefly that he might have an interview 
with Goethe at Weimar. That poet died on the 22d of March, 
and the news seemed to act upon Scott exactly as the illness 
of Borthwickbrae had done in the August before. His impa- 
tience redoubled: all his fine dreams of recovery seemed to 
vanish at once — "Alas for Goethe! "he exclaimed: "but he 
2q 



594 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

at least died at home — Let us to Abbotsford." And be quotes 
more than once in bis letters tbe first hemistich of the line from 
Politian with which he had closed his early memoir of Leyden 
— " Grata quies patriae." 

When the season was sufficiently advanced, then, the party 
set out, Mr. Charles Scott having obtained leave to accompany 
bis father; which was quite necessary, as his elder brother 
had already been obliged to rejoin his regiment. They quitted 
Xaples on the 16th of April, in an open barouche, which could 
at pleasure be coverted into a bed. Sir "Walter was somewhat 
interested by a few of the objects presented to him in the 
earlier stages of his route. The certainty that he was on bis 
way home, for a time soothed and composed him ; and amidst 
the agreeable society which again surrounded him on his 
arrival in Eome, he seemed perhaps as much himself as he 
had ever been in Malta or in Xaples. Tor a moment even his 
literary hope and ardour appear to have revived. But still his 
daughter entertained no doubt, that his consenting to pause 
for even a few days in Eome, was dictated mainly by consider- 
ation of her natural curiosity. Gell went to Eome about the 
same time ; and Sir Walter was introduced there to another 
accomplished countryman, who exerted himself no less than 
did Sir William, to render his stay agreeable to him. This 
was Mr. Edward Cheney — whose family had long been on 
terms of very strict intimacy with the Maclean Clephanes of 
Torloisk, so that Sir Walter was ready to regard him at first 
sight as a friend. Xor was it a small circumstance that the 
Cheney family had then in their occupancy the Villa Muti at 
Erascati, for many of his later years the favourite abode of the 
Cardinal York. 

At Eome. Sir Walter partook of the hospitalities of the 
native nobility, many of whom had travelled into Scotland 
under the influence of his writings, and on one or two occasions 
was well enough to sustain their best impressions of him by 
his conversation. But, on the whole, his feebleness, and in- 
capacity to be roused by objects which, in other days, would 
have appealed most powerfully to his imagination, were too 
painfully obvious : and, indeed, the only, or almost the only 
very lively curiosity he appeared to feel regarded the family 
pictures and other Stuart relics then preserved at the Villa 
Mntd — but especially the monument to Charles Edward and 
bis father in St. Peter's, the work of Canova, executed at the 
cost of George IV. Excepting his visits at Erascati. the only 
excursion he made into the neighbouring country was one to 



ROME. 595 

the grand old castle of Bracciano : where he spent a night in the 
feudal halls of the Orsini, now included among the numberless 
possessions of the Banker Prince Torlonia. 

" Walking on the battlements of this castle next morning " 
(10th May) — says Mr. Cheney — "he spoke of Goethe with 
regret; he had been in correspondence with him before his 
death, and had purposed visiting him at Weimar. I told him 
I had been to see Goethe the year before, and that I had found 
him well, and, though very old, in the perfect possession of all 
his faculties. — ' Of all his faculties ! ' he replied ; — ' it is much 
better to die than to survive them, and better still to die than 
live in the apprehension of it ; but the worst of all,' he added, 
thoughtfully, ' would have been to have survived their partial 
loss, and yet to be conscious of his state.' — He did not seem to 
be, however, a great admirer of some of Goethe's works. Much 
of his popularity, he observed, was owing to pieces which, in 
his latter moments, he might have wished recalled. He spoke 
with much feeling. I answered, that he must derive great con- 
solation in the reflection that his own popularity was owing to 
no such cause. He remained silent for a moment, with his 
eyes fixed on the ground; when he raised them, as he shook 
me by the hand, I perceived the light-blue eye sparkled with 
unusual moisture. He added — ' I am drawing near to the 
close of my career ; I am fast shuffling off the stage. I have 
been perhaps the most voluminous author of the day ; and it is 
a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's 
faith, to corrupt no man's principle.' " 

Next day, Friday, May 11, Sir Walter left Rome. — " During 
his stay there " (adds Mr. Cheney) " he had received every 
mark of attention and respect from the Italians, who, in not 
crowding to visit him, were deterred only by their delicacy and 
their dread of intruding on an invalid. The enthusiasm was 
by no means confined to the higher orders. His fame, and 
even his works, are familiar to all classes — the stalls are filled 
with translations of his novels in the cheapest forms ; and some 
of the most popular plays and operas have been founded upon 
them. Some time after he left Italy, when I was travelling in 
the mountains of Tuscany, it has more than once occurred to 
me to be stopped in little villages, hardly accessible to carriages, 
by an eager admirer of Sir Walter, to inquire after the health 
of my illustrious countryman." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Return to England — Seizure at Nimeguen — Jermyn Street, London — 
Edinburgh — Abbotsford — Death and funeral of Scott in September 
1832 — His Character — Monuments to his Memory — Pictures, Busts, 
and Statues. 

The last jotting of Sir Walter Scott's Diary — perhaps the 
last specimen of his handwriting — records his starting from 
Naples on the 16th of April. After the 11th of May the story 
can hardly be told too briefly. 

The irritation of impatience, which had for a moment been 
suspended by the aspect and society of Rome, returned the 
moment he found himself again on the road, and seemed to 
increase hourly. His companions could with difficulty prevail 
on him to see even the falls of Terni, or the church of Santa 
Croce at Florence. On the 17th, a cold and dreary day, they 
passed the Apennines, and dined on the top of the mountains. 
The snow and the pines recalled Scotland, and he expressed 
pleasure at the sight of them. That night they reached 
Bologna, but he would see none of the interesting objects 
there ; — and next day, hurrying in like manner through Fer- 
rara, he proceeded as far as Monselice. On the 19th he arrived 
at Venice ; and he remained there till the 23d ; but shewed no 
curiosity about anything except the Bridge of Sighs and the ad- 
joining dungeons — down into which he would scramble, though 
the exertion was exceedingly painful to him. On the other 
historical features of that place — one so sure in other days to 
have inexhaustible attractions for him — he would not even look ; 
and it was the same with all that he came within reach of — 
even with the fondly anticipated chapel at Inspruck — as they 
proceeded through the Tyrol, and so onwards, by Munich, Ulm, 
and Heidelberg, to Frankfort. Here (June 5) he entered a 
bookseller's shop; and the people, seeing an English party, 
brought out among the first things, a lithographed print of 
Abbotsford. He said — "I know that already, sir," and hast- 
ened back to the inn without being recognised. Though in 
some parts of the journey they had very severe weather, he 

596 



BETURN TO ENGLAND. 597 

repeatedly wished to travel all the niglit as well as all the day ; 
and the symptoms of an approaching fit were so obvious, that 
he was more than once bled, ere they reached Mayence, by the 
hand of his affectionate domestic. 

At this town they embarked, on the 8th June, in the Rhine 
steam-boat; and while they descended the famous river 
through its most picturesque region, he seemed to enjoy, though 
he said nothing, the perhaps unrivalled scenery it presented 
to him. His eye was fixed on the successive crags and castles, 
and ruined monasteries, each of which had been celebrated in 
some German ballad familiar to his ear, and all of them 
blended in the immortal panorama of Childe Harold. But so 
soon as they had passed Cologne, and nothing but flat shores, 
and here and there a grove of poplars and a village spire were 
offered to the vision, the weight of misery sunk down again 
upon him. It was near Nimeguen, on the evening of the 9th, 
that he sustained another serious attack of apoplexy, combined 
with paralysis. Nicolson's lancet restored, after the lapse of 
some minutes, the signs of animation ; but this was the crown- 
ing blow. Next day he insisted on resuming his journey, and 
on the 11th was lifted into an English steam-boat at Rotterdam. 

He reached London about six o'clock on the evening of 
"Wednesday the loth of June. Owing to the unexpected 
rapidity of the journey, his eldest daughter had had no notice 
when to expect him ; and fearful of finding her either out of 
town, or unprepared to receive him and his attendants under 
her roof, Charles Scott drove to the St. James's hotel in Jermyn 
Street, and established his quarters there before he set out in 
quest of his sister and myself. When we reached the hotel, 
he recognised us with many marks of tenderness, but signified 
that he was totally exhausted; so no attempt was made to 
remove him further, and he was put to bed immediately. Dr. 
Fergusson saw him the same night, and next day Sir Henry 
Halford and Dr. Holland saw him also ; and during the next 
three weeks the two latter visited him daily, while Fergusson 
was scarcely absent from his pillow. The Major was soon on 
the spot. To his children, all assembled once more about him, 
he repeatedly gave his blessing in a very solemn manner, as if 
expecting immediate death ; but he was never in a condition 
for conversation, and sunk either into sleep or delirious stupor 
upon the slightest effort. 

Mrs. Thomas Scott came to town as soon as she heard of his 
arrival, and remained to help us. She was more than once 
recognised and thanked. Mr. Cadell, too, arrived from Edin- 



598 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

burgh, to render any assistance in his power. I think Sir Walter 
saw no other of his friends except Mr. John Richardson, and 
him only once. As usual, he woke up at the sound of a 
familiar voice, and made an attempt to put forth his hand, but 
it dropped powerless, and he said, with a smile — " Excuse my 
hand." Richardson made a struggle to suppress his emotion, 
and, after a moment, got out something about Abbptsford and 
the woods, which he had happened to see shortly before. The 
eye brightened, and he said — " How does Kirklands get on ? " 
Mr. Richardson had lately purchased the estate so called in 
Teviotdale, and Sir Walter had left him busied with plans of 
building. His friend told him that his new house was begun, 
and that the Marquis of Lothian had very kindly lent him 
one of his own, meantime, in its vicinity. " Ay, Lord Lothian 
is a good man," said Sir Walter ; " he is a man from whom one 
may receive a favour, and that's saying a good deal for any man 
in these days." The stupor then sank back upon him, and 
Richardson never heard his voice again. This state of things 
continued till the beginning of July. 

During these melancholy weeks, great interest and sympathy 
were manifested. Allan Cunningham mentions that, walking- 
home late one night, he found several working-men standing 
together at the corner of Jermyn Street, and one of them 
asked him — as if there was but one deathbed in London — 
" Do ypu know, sir, if this is the street where he is lying ? " 
The inquiries both at the hotel and at my house were incessant ; 
and I think there was hardly a member of the royal family 
who did not send every day. The newspapers teemed with 
paragraphs about Sir Walter; and one of these, it appears, 
threw out a suggestion that his travels had exhausted his 
pecuniary resources, and that if he were capable of reflection 
at all, cares of that sort might probably harass his pillow. 
This paragraph came from a very ill-informed, but, I daresay, 
a well-meaning quarter. It caught the attention of some 
members of the Government ; and, in consequence, I received a 
private communication, to the effect that, if the case were as 
stated, Sir Walter's family had only to say what sum would 
relieve him from embarrassment, and it would be immediately 
advanced by the Treasury. The then Paymaster of the Forces, 
Lord John Russell, had the delicacy to convey this message 
through a lady with whose friendship' he knew us to be 
honoured — the Honourable Catherine Arden. We expressed 
our grateful sense of his politeness, and of the liberality of the 
Government, and I now beg leave to do so once 






JEBMYN STREET, LONDON. 599 

but his Lordship was of course informed that Sir Walter Scott 
was not situated as the journalist had represented. 

Dr. Fergusson's Memorandum on Jermyn Street will be 
acceptable to the reader. He says — " When I saw Sir Walter, 
he was lying in the second floor back-room of the St. James's 
Hotel, in a state of stupor, from which, however, he could be 
roused for a moment by being addressed, and then he recognised 
those about him, but immediately relapsed. I think I never 
saw anything more magnificent than the symmetry of his 
colossal bust, as he lay on the pillow with his chest and neck 
exposed. During the time he was in Jermyn Street he was 
calm but never collected, and in general either in absolute 
stupor or in a waking dream. He never seemed to know where 
he was, but imagined himself to be still in the steam-boat. 
The rattling of carriages, and the noises of the street, some- 
times disturbed this illusion — and then he fancied himself at 
the polling-booth of Jedburgh, where he had been insulted and 
stoned. During the whole of this period of apparent helpless- 
ness, the great features of his character could not be mistaken. 
He always exhibited great self-possession, and acted his part 
with wonderful power whenever visited, though he relapsed 
the next moment into the stupor from which strange voices had 
roused him. A gentleman [Mr. Richardson] stumbled over a 
chair in his dark room; — he immediately started up, and 
though unconscious that it was a friend, expressed as much 
concern and feeling as if he had never been labouring under 
the irritability of disease. It was impossible even for those 
who most constantly saw and waited on him in his then de- 
plorable condition, to relax from the habitual deference which 
he had always inspired. He expressed his will as determinedly 
as ever, and enforced it with the same apt and good-natured 
irony as he was wont to use. 

" At length his constant yearning to return to Abbotsford 
induced his physicians to consent to his removal ; and the 
moment this was notified to him, it seemed to infuse new 
vigour into his frame. It was on a calm, clear afternoon of the 
7th July, that every preparation was made for his embarkation 
on board the steam-boat. He was placed on a chair by his 
faithful servant Mcolson, half-dressed, and loosely wrapped in 
a quilted dressing-gown. He requested Lockhart and myself 
to wheel him towards the light of the open window, and we 
both remarked the vigorous lustre of his eye. He sat there 
silently gazing on space for more than half an hour, apparently 
wholly occupied with his own thoughts, and having no distinct 



600 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

perception of where he was, or how he came there. He suffered 
himself to be lifted into his carriage, which was surrounded by 
a crowd, among whoni were many gentlemen on horseback, who 
had loitered about to gaze on the scene. His children were 
deeply affected, and Mrs. Lockhart trembled from head to foot, 
and wept bitterly. Thus surrounded by those nearest to him, 
he alone was unconscious of the cause or the depth of their grief, 
and while yet alive seemed to be carried to his grave." 

On this his last journey, Sir Walter was attended by his two 
daughters, Mr. Cadell, and myself — and also by Dr. Thomas 
Watson, who (it being impossible for Dr. Fergusson to leave 
town at that moment) kindly undertook to see him safe at 
Abbotsford. We embarked in the James Watt steam-boat, the 
master of which (Captain John Jamieson), as well as the agents 
of the proprietors, made every arrangement in their power for 
the convenience of the invalid. The Captain gave up for Sir 
Walter's use his own private cabin, which was a separate 
erection — a sort of cottage on the deck ; and he seemed uncon- 
scious, after laid in bed there, that any new removal had oc- 
curred. On arriving at ISTewhaven, late on the 9th, we found 
careful preparations made for his landing by the manager of 
the Shipping Company (Mr. Hamilton) — and Sir Walter, pros- 
trate in his carriage, was slung on shore, and conveyed from 
thence to Douglas's hotel, in St. Andrew's Square, in the same 
complete apparent unconsciousness. Mrs. Douglas had in former 
days been the Duke of Buccleuch's house-keeper at Bowhill, and 
she and her husband had also made the most suitable provision. 

At a very early hour on the morning of Wednesday the 11th, 
we again placed him in his carriage, and he lay in the same 
torpid state during the first two stages on the road to Tweed- 
side. But as we descended the vale of the Gala he began to 
gaze about him, and by degrees it was obvious that he was 
recognising the features of that familiar landscape. Presently 
he murmured a name or two — " Gala Water, surely — Buck- 
holm — Torwoodlee." As we rounded the hill at Ladhope, 
and the outline of the Eiklons burst on him, he became greatly 
excited; and, when turning himself on the couch, his eye 
caught at length his own towers at the distance of a mile, he 
sprang up with a cry of delight. The river being in flood, we 
had to go round a, few miles by Melrose bridge ; and during the 
time this occupied, his woods and house being within prospect, 
it required occasionally both Dr. Watson's strength and mine, 
in addition to Nicolson's, to keep him in the carriage. After 
passing the bridge, the road for a couple of miles loses sight of 



LAST BAYS AT ABBOTSFOBB. 601 

Abbotsf ord, and he relapsed into his stupor ; but on gaining 
the bank immediately above it, his excitement became again 
ungovernable. 

Mr. Laidlaw was waiting at the porch, and assisted us in 
lifting him into the dining-room, where his bed had been pre- 
pared. He sat bewildered for a few moments, and then resting 
his eye on Laidlaw, said — " Ha ! Willie Laidlaw ! man, 
how often have I thought of you ! " By this time his dogs had 
assembled about his chair — they began to fawn upon him and 
lick his hands, and he alternately sobbed and smiled over them, 
until sleep oppressed him. 

Dr. Watson having consulted on all things with Mr. Clarkson 
of Melrose, and his father, the good old " Country Surgeon " of 
Selkirk, resigned the patient to them, and returned to London. 
None of them could have any hope, but that of soothing irrita- 
tion. Recovery was no longer to be thought of: but there 
might be Euthanasia. 

And yet something like a ray of hope did break in upon us 
next morning. Sir Walter awoke perfectly conscious where 
he was, and expressed an ardent wish to be carried out into his 
garden. We procured a Bath chair from Huntley Burn, and 
Laidlaw and I wheeled him out before his door, and up and 
down for some time on the turf, and among the rose-beds then 
in full bloom. The grandchildren admired the new vehicle, 
and would be helping in their way to push it about. He sat in 
silence, smiling placidly on them and the dogs their companions, 
and now and then admiring the house, the screen of the garden, 
and the flowers and trees. By and by he conversed a little, 
very composedly, with us — said he was happy to be at home 
— that he felt better than he had ever done since he left it, 
and would perhaps disappoint the doctors after all. He then 
desired to be wheeled through his rooms, and we moved him 
leisurely for an hour or more up and down the hall and the 
great library : — "I have seen much," he kept saying, " but 
nothing like my ain house — give me one turn more ! " He 
was gentle as an infant, and allowed himself to be put to bed 
again, the moment we told him that we thought he had had 
enough for one day. 

Next morning he was still better. After again enjoying 
the Bath chair for perhaps a couple of hours out of doors, he 
desired to be drawn into the library, and placed by the central 
window, that he might look down upon the Tweed. Here he 
expressed a wish that I should read to him, and when I asked 
from what book, he said — " Need you ask ? There is but one." 



602 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

I chose the 14th chapter of St. John's Gospel ; he listened with 
mild devotion, and said when I had done — " Well, this is a 
great comfort — I have followed yon distinctly, and I feel as 
if I were yet to be myself again." In this placid frame he 
was again pnt to bed, and had many hours of soft slumber. 

On the third day Mr. Laidlaw and I again wheeled him 
about the small piece of lawn and shrubbery in front of the 
house for some time ; and the weather being delightful, and 
all the richness of summer around him, he seemed to taste 
fully the balmy influences of nature. The sun getting very 
strong, we halted the chair in a shady corner, just within the 
verge of his verdant arcade around the court-wall ; and breath- 
ing the coolness of the spot, he said, " Eead me some amusing 
thing — read me a bit of Crabbe." I brought out the first vol- 
ume of his old favourite that I could lay hand on, and turned 
to what I remembered as one of his most favourite passages 
in it — the description of the arrival of the Players in the 
Borough. He listened with great interest, and also, as I soon 
perceived, with great curiosity. Every now and then he ex- 
claimed, "Capital — excellent — very good — Crabbe has lost 
nothing " — and Ave were too well satisfied that he considered 
himself as hearing a new production, when, chuckling over one 
couplet, he said " Better and better — but how will poor Terry 
endure these cuts ?" I went on with the poet's terrible sar- 
casms upon the theatrical life, and he listened eagerly, mutter- 
ing, "Honest Dan!" — "Dan won't like this." At length I 
reached those lines — 

" Sad happy race ! soon raised and soon depressed, 
Your days all passed in jeopardy and jest : 
Poor without prudence, with afflictions vain, 
Not warned by misery, nor enriched by gain." 

"Shut the book," said Sir Walter — "I can't stand more of 
this — it will touch Terry to the very quick." 

On the morning of Sunday the 15th, he was again taken out 
into the little pleasaunce, and got as far as his favourite terrace- 
walk between the garden and the river, from which he seemed 
to survey the valley and the hills with much satisfaction. On 
re-entering the house, he desired me to read to him from the 
New Testament, and after that he again called for a little of 
Crabbe ; but whatever I selected from that poet seemed to be 
listened to as if it made part of some new volume published 
while he was in Italy. He attended with this sense of novelty 
even to the tale of Phoebe Dawson, which not many months 



LAST DAYS AT ABBOTSFORD. 603 

before he could have repeated every line of, and which I chose 
for one of these readings, because, as is known to every one, it 
had formed the last solace of Mr. Fox's death-bed. On the 
contrary, his recollection of whatever I read from the Bible 
appeared to be lively; and in the afternoon, when we made 
his grandson, a child of six years, repeat some of Dr. Watts's 
hymns by his chair, he seemed also to remember them per- 
fectly. That evening he heard the Church service, and when 
I was about to close the book, said — " Why do you omit the 
visitation for the sick ? " — which I added accordingly. 

On Monday he remained in bed, and seemed extremely 
feeble; but after breakfast on Tuesday the 17th he appeared 
revived somewhat, and was again wheeled about on the turf. 
Presently he fell asleep in his chair, and after dozing for per- 
haps half an hour, started awake, and shaking the plaids we 
had put about him from off his shoulders, said — "This is sad 
idleness. I shall forget what I have been thinking of, if I 
don't set it down now. Take me into my own room, and fetch 
the keys of my desk." He repeated this so earnestly, that we 
could not refuse ; his daughters went into his study, opened his 
writing-desk, and laid paper and pens in the usual order, and I 
then moved him through the hall and into the spot where he 
had always been accustomed to work. When the chair was 
placed at the desk, and he found himself in the old position, 
he smiled and thanked us, and said — " Now give me my pen, 
and leave me for a little to myself." Sophia put the pen into 
his hand, and he endeavoured to close his fingers upon it, but 
they refused their office — it dropped on the paper. He sank 
back among his pillows, silent tears rolling down his cheeks ; 
but composing himself by and by, motioned to me to wheel 
him out of doors again. Laidlaw met us at the porch, and 
took his turn of the chair. Sir Walter, after a little while, 
again dropt into slumber. When he was awaking, Laidlaw 
said to me — "Sir Walter has had a little repose." — "No, 
Willie," said he — "no repose for Sir Walter but in the grave." 
The tears again rushed from his eyes. "Friends," said he, 
"don't let me expose myself — get me to bed — that's the only 
place." 

With this scene ended our glimpse of daylight. Sir Walter 
never, I think, left his room afterwards, and hardly his bed, 
except for an hour or two in the middle of the day ; and after 
another week he was unable even for this. During a few days 
he was in a state of painful irritation — and I saw realised all 
that he had himself prefigured in his description of the meet- 



604 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

ing between Chrystal Croftangry and his paralytic friend. 
Dr. Ross came out from Edinburgh, bringing with him his 
wife, one of the dearest nieces of the Clerks' table. Sir Walter 
with some difficulty recognised the Doctor; but on hearing 
Mrs. Ross's voice, exclaimed at once — " Isn't that Kate 
Hume ? " These kind friends remained for two or three days 
with us. Clarkson's lancet was pronounced necessary, and the 
relief it afforded was, I am happy to say, very effectual. 

After this he declined daily, but still there was great strength 
to be wasted, and the process was long. He seemed, however, 
to suffer no bodily pain ; and his mind, though hopelessly ob- 
scured, appeared, when there was any symptom of conscious- 
ness, to be dwelling, with rare exceptions, on serious and solemn 
things; the accent of the voice grave, sometimes awful, but 
never querulous, and very seldom indicative of any angry or 
resentful thoughts. Now and then he imagined himself to be 
administering justice as Sheriff; and once or twice he seemed 
to be ordering Tom Purdie about trees. A few times also, I 
am sorry to say, we could perceive that his fancy was at Jed- 
burgh — and BurJc Sir Walter escaped him in a melancholy 
tone. But commonly whatever we could follow him in was a 
fragment of the Bible (especially the Prophecies of Isaiah and 
the Book of Job), or some petition in the litany, or a verse of 
some psalm (in the old Scotch metrical version), or of some of 
the magnificent hymns of the Romish ritual, in which he had 
always delighted, but which probably hung on his memory 
now in connexion with the Church services he had attended 
while in Italy. We very often heard distinctly the cadence of 
the Dies Ine; and I think the very last stanza that we could 
make out, was the first of a still greater favourite : — 

" Stabat Mater dolorosa, 
Juxta crucem lachrymosa, 
Dum pendebat Films." 

All this time he continued to recognise his daughters, Laid- 
law, and myself, whenever we spoke to him — and received 
every attention with a most touching thankfulness. Mr. Clark- 
son, too, was always saluted with the old courtesy, though the 
cloud opened but a moment for him to do so. Most truly 
might it be said that the gentleman survived the genius. 

After two or three weeks had passed in this way, I was 
obliged to leave Sir Walter for a single day, and go into Edin- 
burgh to transact business, on his account, with Mr. Henry 



LAST DATS AT ABBOTSFORB. 605 

Cockbum (now Lord Cockburn), then Solicitor-General for 
Scotland. The Scotch Reform Bill threw a great burden of 
new duties and responsibilities upon the Sheriffs ; and Scott's 
Sheriff-substitute, the Laird of Raeburn, not having been regu- 
larly educated for the law, found himself unable to encounter 
these novelties, especially as regarded the registration of 
voters, and other details connected with the recent enlarge- 
ment of the electoral franchise. Under such circumstances, 
as no one but the Sheriff could appoint another Substitute, 
it became necessary for Sir Walter's family to communicate 
the state he was in in a formal manner to the Law Officers 
of the Crown; and the Lord Advocate (Mr. Jeffrey), in conse- 
quence, introduced and carried through Parliament a short bill 
(2 and 3 William IV. cap. 101), authorising the Government to 
appoint a new Sheriff of Selkirkshire, " during the incapacity or 
non-resignation of Sir Walter Scott." It was on this bill that 
the Solicitor-General had expressed a wish to converse with 
me : but there was little to be said, as the temporary nature of 
the new appointment gave no occasion for any pecuniary ques- 
tion ; and, if that had been otherwise, the circumstances of the 
case would have rendered Sir Walter's family entirely indiffer- 
ent upon such a subject. There can be no doubt, that if he 
had recovered in so far as to be capable of executing a resigna- 
tion, the Government would have considered it just to reward 
thirty-two years' faithful services by a retired allowance equiv- 
alent to his salary — and as little, that the Government would 
have had sincere satisfaction in settling that matter in the 
shape most acceptable to himself. And perhaps (though I 
feel that it is scarcely worth while) I may as well here express 
my regret that a statement highly unjust and injurious should 
have found its way into the pages of some of Sir Walter's 
biographers. These writers have thought fit to insinuate that 
there was a want of courtesy and respect on the part of the 
Lord Advocate, and the other official persons connected with 
this arrangement. On the contrary, nothing could be more 
handsome and delicate than the whole of their conduct in it; 
■ Mr. Cockburn could not have entered into the case with greater 
feeling and tenderness, had it concerned a brother of his own ; 
and when Mr. Jeffrey introduced his bill in the House of 
Commons, he used language so graceful and touching, that both 
Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Croker went across the House to 
thank him cordially for it. 

Perceiving, towards the close of August, that the end was 
near, and thinking it very likely that Abbotsford might soon 



606 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

undergo many changes, and myself, at all events, never see it 
again, I felt a desire to have some image preserved of the 
interior apartments as occupied by their founder, and invited 
from Edinburgh for that purpose Sir Walter's dear friend, Sir 
William Allan — whose presence, I well knew, would even 
under the circumstances of that time be nowise troublesome 
to any of the family, but the contrary in all respects. Sir 
William willingly complied, and executed a series of beautiful 
drawings. He also shared our watchings, and witnessed all 
but the last moments. Sir Walter's cousins, the ladies of 
Ashestiel, came down frequently, for a clay or two at a time, 
and did whatever sisterly affection could prompt, both for the 
sufferer and his daughters. Miss Mary Scott (daughter of his 
uncle Thomas), and Mrs. Scott of Harden, did the like. 

As I was dressing on the morning of Monday the 17th of 
September, Nicolson came into my room, and told me that his 
master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness, 
and wished to see me immediately. I found him entirely him- 
self, though in the last extreme of feebleness. His eye was 
clear and calm — every trace of the wild fire of delirium extin- 
guished. " Lockhart," he said, " I may have but a minute to 
speak to you. My dear, be a good man — be virtuous — be 
religious — be a good man. Nothing else will give you any 
comfort when you come to lie here." — He paused, and I said 
— "Shall I send for Sophia and Anne?" — "No," said he, 
" don't disturb them. Poor souls ! I know they were up all 
night — God bless you all." — With this he sunk into a very 
tranquil sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any 
sign of consciousness, except for an instant on the arrival of 
his sons. 

They, on learning that the scene was about to close, obtained 
anew leave of absence from their posts, and both reached 
Abbotsford on the 19th. About half-past one p.m. on the 21st 
of September, Sir Walter breathed his last, in the presence 
of all his children. It was a beautiful day — so warm, that 
every window was wide open — and so perfectly still, that the 
sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of 
the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt 
around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes. 
No sculptor ever modelled a more majestic image of repose. 

Almost every newspaper that announced this event in Scot- 
land, and many in England, had the signs of mourning usual on 
the demise of a king. With hardly an exception, the voice 
was that of universal, unmixed grief and veneration. 



DEATH AND FUNERAL OF SCOTT. 607 

It was considered due to Sir Walter's physicians, and to the 
public, that the nature of his malady should be distinctly 
ascertained. The result was, that there appeared the traces of 
a very slight mollification in one part of the substance of the 
brain. 

His funeral was conducted in an unostentatious manner, 
but the attendance was very great. Few of his old friends 
then in Scotland were absent, — and many, both friends and 
strangers, came from a great distance. His domestics and 
foresters made it their petition that no hireling hand might 
assist in carrying his remains. They themselves bore the 
coffin to the hearse, and from the hearse to the grave. The 
pall-bearers were his sons, his son-in-law, and his little grand- 
son; his cousins, Charles Scott of Nesbitt, James Scott of 
Jedburgh (sons to his uncle Thomas), William Scott of Rae- 
burn, Robert Rutherford, Clerk to the Signet, Colonel (now 
Lieut.-General Sir James) Russell of Ashestiel, William Keith 
(brother to Sir Alexander Keith of Ravelstone) ; and the chief 
of his family, Hugh Scott of Harden, afterwards Lord Pol- 
warth. 

When the company were assembled, according to the usual 
Scotch fashion, prayers were offered up by the Very Reverend 
Dr. Baird, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and by 
the Reverend Dr. David Dickson, Minister of St. Cuthbert's, 
who both expatiated in a very striking manner on the virtuous 
example of the deceased. 

The court-yard and all the precincts of Abbotsford were 
crowded with uncovered spectators as the procession was 
arranged; and as it advanced through Darnick and Melrose, 
and the adjacent villages, the whole population appeared at 
their doors in like manner — almost all in black. The train of 
carriages extended, I understand, over more than a mile ; the 
yeomanry followed in great numbers on horseback ; and it was 
late in the day ere we reached Dryburgh. Some accident, it 
was observed, had caused the hearse to halt for several min- 
utes on the summit of the hill at Bemerside — exactly where a 
prospect of remarkable richness opens, and where Sir Walter 
had always been accustomed to rein up his horse. The day 
was dark and lowering, and the wind high. 

The wide enclosure at the Abbey of Dryburgh was thronged 
with old and young; and when the coffin was taken from the 
hearse, and again laid on the shoulders of the afflicted serv- 
ing-men, one deep sob burst from a thousand lips. Mr. Arch- 
deacon Williams read the Burial Service of the Church of 



608 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

England ; and thus, about half -past five o'clock in the evening 
of Wednesday the 26th September 1832, the remains of Sir 
Walter Scott were laid by the side of his wife in the sepul- 
chre of his ancestors — "in sure and certain hope of the resur- 
rection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ : ivho shall 
change our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious body, 
according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all 
things to himself" 

We read in Solomon — " The heart knoweth his own bitter- 
ness, and a. stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy;" — 
and a wise poet of our own time thus beautifully expands the 
saying : — • 

"Why should we faint and fear to live alone, 
Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die ; 
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, 
Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh ? " ! 

Such considerations have always induced me to regard with 
small respect any attempt to delineate fully and exactly any 
human being's character. I distrust, even in very humble 
cases, our capacity for judging our neighbour fairly; and I 
cannot but pity the presumption that must swell in the heart 
and brain of any ordinary brother of the race, when he dares 
to pronounce ex cathedrd on the whole structure and complex- 
ion of a great mind, from the comparatively narrow and scanty 
materials which can by possibility have been placed before him. 
Nor is the difficulty to my view lessened, — perhaps it is rather 
increased, when the great man is a great artist. It is true, that 
many of the feelings common to our nature can only be ex- 
pressed adequately, and that some of the finest of them can 
only be expressed at all, in the language of art ; and more es- 
pecially in the language of poetry. But it is equally true, that 
high and sane art never attempts to express that for which the 
artist does not claim and expect general sympathy ; and how- 
ever much of what we had thought to be our own secrets he 
ventures to give shape to, it becomes us, I can never help be- 
lieving, to rest convinced that there remained a world of deeper 
mysteries to which the dignity of genius would refuse any ut- 
terance. I have therefore endeavoured to lay before the reader 
those parts of Sir Walter's character to which we have access, 
as they were indicated in his sayings and doings through the 

1 Keble's Christian Year, p. 261. 



HIS CHARACTEB. 609 

long series of his years ; — but refrained from obtruding almost 
anything of comment. It was my wish to let the character de- 
velope itself : and now I am not going to " peep and botanise " 
upon his grave. But a few general observations will be for- 
given — perhaps expected. 

I believe that if the history of any one family in upper or 
middle life could be faithfully written, it might be as gen- 
erally interesting, and as permanently useful, as that of any 
nation, however great and renowned. But literature has never 
produced any worthy book of this class, and probably it never 
will. The only lineages in which we can pretend to read per- 
sonal character far back, with any distinctness, are those of 
kings and princes, and a few noble houses of the first emi- 
nence ; and it hardly needed Swift's biting satire to satisfy 
the student of the past, that the very highest pedigrees are as 
uncertain as the very lowest. We flatter the reigning mon- 
arch, or his haughtier satellite, by tracing in their lineaments 
the conqueror or legislator of a former century. But call up 
the dead, according to the Dean's incantation, and we might 
have the real ancestor in some chamberlain, confessor, or mu- 
sician. Scott himself delighted, perhaps above all other books, 
in such as approximate to the character of good family his- 
tories, — as for example, Godscroft's House of Douglas and 
Angus, and the Memorie of the Somervilles, — which last is, 
as far as I know, the best of its class in any language ; and 
his reprint of the trivial "Memorials" of the Haliburtons, to 
whose dust he is now gathered, was but one of a thousand in- 
dications of his anxiety to realise his own ancestry to his. 
imagination. No testamentary deed, instrument of contract, 
or entry in a parish register, seemed valueless to him, if it 
bore in any manner, however obscure or distant, on the per- 
sonal history of any of his ascertainable predecessors. The 
chronicles of the race furnished the fireside talk to which he 
listened in infancy at Smailholm, and his first rhymes were 
those of Satchels. His physical infirmity was reconciled to 
him, even dignified, perhaps, by tracing it back to forefathers 
who acquired famousness in their own way, in spite of such 
disadvantages. These studies led by easy and inevitable links 
to those of the history of his province generally, and then of 
his native kingdom. The lamp of his zeal burnt on brighter 
and brighter amidst the dust of parchments ; his love and pride 
vivified whatever he hung over in these dim records, and patient 
antiquarianism, long brooding and meditating, became glori- 
ously transmuted into the winged spirit of national poetry. 
2r 



610 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Whatever he had in himself, he would fain have made out 
a hereditary claim for. He often spoke both seriously and 
sportively on the subject. He had assembled about him in 
his "own great parlour," as he called it — the room in which 
he died — all the pictures of his ancestors that he could come 
by ; and in his most genial evening mood he seemed never to 
weary of perusing them. The Cavalier of Killiecrankie — 
brave, faithful, learned, and romantic old " Beardie," a deter- 
mined but melancholy countenance — was often surveyed with 
a repetition of the solitary Latin rhyme of his Vow. He had, 
of course, no portraits of the elder heroes of Harden to lecture 
upon; but a skilful hand had supplied the same wall with a 
fanciful delineation of the rough wooing of " Meikle-mouthed 
Meg ; " and the only historical picture, properly so called, that 
he ever bespoke, was to be taken (for it was never executed) 
from the Raid o' the Eedswire, when 

" The Kutherfords with great renown, 
Convoyed the town o' Jedbrugh out." 

The ardent but sagacious "goodman of Sandyknowe," hangs 
by the side of his father, Bearded Wat ; and when moralising 
in his latter day over the doubtful condition of his ultimate 
fortunes, Sir Walter would point to " Honest Robin," and say, 
" Blood will out : — my building and planting was but his buy- 
ing the hunter before he stocked his sheep-walk over again." 
" And yet," I once heard him say, glancing to the likeness of 
his own staid calculating father, " it was a wonder, too — for I 
have a thread of the attorney in me." And so no doubt he 
had ; for the " elements " were mingled in him curiously as well 
as "gently." 

An imagination such as his, concentrating its day-dreams on 
things of this order, soon shaped out a world of its own — to 
which it would fain accommodate the real one. The love of his 
country became indeed a passion ; no knight ever tilted for 
his mistress more willingly than he would have bled and died 
to preserve even the airiest surviving nothing of her antique 
pretensions for Scotland. But the Scotland of his affections 
had the clan Scott for her kernel. Next, and almost equal to 
the throne, was Buccleuch. Fancy rebuilt and prodigally em- 
bellished the whole system of the social existence of the old 
time in which the clansman (wherever there were clans) ac- 
knowledged practically no sovereign but his chief. The author 
of the Lay would rather have seen his heir carry the Banner 



HIS CHARACTER. 611 

of Bellenden gallantly at a foot-ball match on Carterhaugh, 
than he would have heard that the boy had attained the high- 
est honours of the first university in Europe. His original 
pride was to be an acknowledged member of one of the " hon- 
ourable families" whose progenitors had been celebrated by 
Satchels for following this banner in blind obedience to the 
patriarchal leader; his first and last worldly ambition was 
to be himself the founder of a distinct branch; he desired to 
plant a lasting root, and dreamt not of personal fame, but of 
long distant generations rejoicing in the name of "Scott of 
Abbotsford." By this idea all his reveries — all his aspirations 

— all his plans and efforts, were overshadowed and controlled. 
The great object and end only rose into clearer daylight, and 
swelled into more substantial dimensions, as public applause 
strengthened his confidence in his own powers and faculties ; 
and when he had reached the summit of universal and un- 
rivalled honour, he clung to his first love with the faith of a 
Paladin. It is easy enough to smile at all this ; many will not 
understand it, and some who do may pity it. But it was at 
least a different thing from the modern vulgar ambition of 
amassing a fortune and investing it in land. The lordliest vis- 
ion of acres would have had little charm for him, unless they 
were situated on Ettrick or Yarrow, or in 

"Pleasant Tiviedale, 

Fast by the river Tweed " 

— somewhere within the primeval territory of "the Bough 
Clan." 

His worldly ambition was thus grafted on that ardent feel- 
ing for blood and kindred which was the great redeeming ele- 
ment in the social life of what we call the middle ages ; and 

— though no man estimated the solid advantages of modern 
existence more justly than he did, when, restraining his fancy, 
he exercised his graver faculties on the comparison — it was 
the natural effect of the studies he devoted himself to and rose 
by, to indispose him for dwelling on the sober results of judg- 
ment and reason in all such matters. What a striking passage 
that is in one of his letters, where he declines to write a biog- 
raphy of Queen Mary, " because his opinion was contrary to 
his feeling ! " But he confesses the same of his Jacobitism ; 
and yet how eagerly does he seem to have grasped at the 
shadow, however false and futile, under which he chose to see 
the means of reconciling his Jacobitism with loyalty to the 



612 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

reigning monarch who befriended him ? We find him, over 
and over again, alluding to George IY. as acquiring a title 
de jure on the death of the poor Cardinal of York ! Yet who 
could have known better that whatever rights the exiled males 
of the Stuart line ever possessed, must have remained entire 
with their female descendants ? 

The same resolution to give imagination her scope, and 
always in favour of antiquity, is the ruling principle and charm 
of all his best writings. So also with all the details of his 
building at Abbotsford, and of his hospitable existence, when 
he had fairly completed his " romance in stone and lime ; " — 
every outline copied from some old baronial edifice in Scotland 
— every roof and window blazoned with clan bearings, or the 
lion rampant gules, or the heads of the ancient Stuart kings. 
He wished to revive the interior life of the castles he had emu- 
lated — their wide, open, joyous reception of all comers, but 
especially of kinsmen and neighbours — ballads and pibrochs 
to enliven flowing bowls and quaiglis — jolly hunting fields in 
which yeoman and gentleman might ride side by side — and 
mirthful dances, where no Sir Piercy Shafton need blush to 
lead out the miller's daughter. In the brightest meridian of 
his genius and fame, this was his beau ideal. There was much 
kindness surely in such ambition : — in spite of the apparent 
contradiction in terms, was there not really much humility 
about it ? 

To this ambition we owe the gigantic monuments of Scott's 
genius ; and to the kindly feelings out of which his ambition 
grew, grew also his connexion with merchandise. I need not 
recur to that sad and complicated chapter. Nor, perhaps, need 
I offer any more speculations, by way of explaining, and recon- 
ciling to his previous and subsequent history and demeanour, 
either the mystery in which he had chosen to wrap his com- 
mercial connexions from his most intimate friends, or the care- 
lessness with which he abandoned these matters to the direction 
of inefficient colleagues. And yet I ought, I rather think, to 
have suggested to certain classes of my readers, at a much ear- 
lier stage, that no man could in former times be called either 
to the English or the Scottish Bar, who was known to have 
any direct interest in any commercial undertaking of any sort ; 
and that the body of feelings or prejudices in which this regula- 
tion originated — (for though there might be sound reason for 
it besides, such undoubtedly was the main source) — prevailed 
in Scotland in Sir Walter's youth, to an extent of which the 
present generation may not easily form an adequate notion. 



HIS CHARACTER. 613 

In the minds of the " northern noblesse cle la robe" as they are 
styled in*Redgauntlet, such feelings had wide and potent au- 
thority ; insomuch that I can understand perfectly how Scott, 
even after he ceased to practise at the Bar, being still a Sheriff, 
and a member of the Faculty of Advocates, should have shrunk 
sensitively from the idea of having his alliance with a trading 
firm revealed among his comrades of the gown. And, more- 
over, the practice of mystery is, perhaps, of all practices, the 
one most likely to grow into a habit : secret breeds secret ; 
and I ascribe, after all, the long silence about Waverley to 
the matured influence of this habit, as much as to any of the 
motives which the author has thought fit to assign in his late 
confessions. 

But was there not, in fact, something that lay far deeper 
than a mere professional prejudice ? Among the many things 
in Scott's Diaries which cast strong light upon the previous 
part of his history, I must number the reluctance which he 
confesses himself to have felt towards the resumption of the 
day's proper appointed task — however willing, nay eager, to 
labour sedulously on something else. We know how gallantly 
he combated it in the general — but these precious Diaries 
themselves are not the least pregnant proofs of the extent to 
which it very often prevailed — for an hour or two at least, if 
not for the day. I think this, if we were to go no farther, 
might help us somewhat in understanding the neglect about 
superintending ledgers and bill books ; and, consequently, the 
rashness about buying land, building, and the like. But to 
what are we to ascribe the origin of this reluctance for accu- 
rate and minute investigation and transaction of business, so 
important to himself, in a man possessing such extraordinary 
sagacity, and exercising it every day with admirable regular- 
ity and precision, in the various capacities of the head of a 
family — the friend — the magistrate — the most distinguished 
citizen of Edinburgh — beyond all comparison the most distin- 
guished member of society that figured in his time in his native 
kingdom ? 

The whole system of conceptions and aspirations, of which 
his early active life was the exponent, resolves itself into a 
romantic idealisation of Scottish aristocracy. He desired to 
secure for his descendants (for himself he had very soon ac- 
quired something infinitely more nattering to self-love and 
vanity) a decent and honourable middle station — in a scheme 
of life so constituted originally, and which his fancy pictured 
as capable of being so revived, as to admit of the kindliest 



614 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

personal contact between (almost) the peasant at the plough, 
and the magnate with revenues rivalling the monarch's. It 
was the patriarchal — the clan system, that he thought of ; 
one that never prevailed even in Scotland, within the historical 
period that is to say, except in the Highlands, and in his own 
dear Border-land. This system knew nothing of commerce 
— as little certainly of literature beyond the raid-ballad of the 
wandering harper, — 

" High placed in hall — a welcome guest." 

His filial reverence of imagination shrunk from marring the 
antique, if barbarous, simplicity. I suspect that at the high- 
est elevation of his literary renown — when princes bowed to 
his name, and nations thrilled at it — he would have consid- 
ered losing all that at a change of the wind, as nothing, com- 
pared to parting with his place as the Cadet of Harden and 
Clansman of Buccleuch, who had, no matter by what means, 
reached such a position, that when a notion arose of embody- 
ing " a Buccleuch legion," not a Scott in the Forest would have 
thought it otherwise than natural for Abbotsforcl to be one of 
the field-officers. I can, therefore, understand that he may 
have, from the very first, exerted the dispensing power of im- 
agination very liberally, in virtually absolving himself from 
dwelling on the wood of which his ladder was to be constructed. 
Enough was said in a preceding chapter of the obvious fact, 
that the author of such a series of romances as his, must have, 
to all intents and purposes, lived more than half his life in 
worlds purely fantastic. In one of the last obscure and falter- 
ing pages of his Diary he says, that if any one asked him how 
much of his thought was occupied by the novel then in hand, 
the answer would have been, that in one sense it never occu- 
pied him except when the amanuensis sat before him, but that 
in another it was never five minutes out of his head. Such, I 
have no doubt, the case had always been. But I must be ex- 
cused from doubting whether, when the substantive fiction 
actually in process of manufacture was absent from his mind, 
the space was often or voluntarily occupied (no positive ex- 
ternal duty interposing) upon the real practical worldly posi- 
tion and business of the Clerk of Session — of the Sheriff, — 
least of all of the printer or the bookseller. The sum is, if I 
read him aright, that he was always willing, in his ruminative 
moods, to veil, if possible, from his own optics the kind of 
machinery by which alone he had found the means of attaining 



HIS CHARACTER. 615 

his darling objects. Having acquired a perhaps unparalleled 
power over the direction of scarcely paralleled faculties, he 
chose to exert his power in this manner. On no other suppo- 
sition can I find his history intelligible ; — I mean, of course, 
the great obvious and marking facts of his history ; for I hope 
I have sufficiently disclaimed all pretension to a thorough-going 
analysis. He appears to have studiously escaped from what- 
ever could have interfered with his own enjoyment — to have 
revelled in the fair results, and waved the wand of obliterating 
magic over all besides ; and persisted so long, that (like the 
sorcerer he celebrates) he became the dupe of his own delu- 
sions. It is thus that (not forgetting the subsidiary influence 
of professional Edinburgh prejudices) I am inclined, on the 
whole, to account for his initiation in the practice of mystery 

— a thing, at first sight, so alien from the frank, open, gener- 
ous nature of a man, than whoni none ever had or deserved to 
have more real friends. 

The indulgence cost him very dear. It ruined his fortunes 

— but I can have no doubt that it did worse than that. I can- 
not suppose that a nature like his was fettered and shut up in 
this way without suffering very severely from the "cold ob- 
struction." There must have been a continual " insurrection " 
in his " state of man ; " and, above all, I doubt not that what 
gave him the bitterest pain in the hour of his calamities, was 
the feeling of compunction with which he then found himself 
obliged to stand before those with whom he had, through life, 
cultivated brotherly friendship, convicted of having kept his 
heart closed to them on what they could not but suppose to 
have been the chief subjects of his thought and anxiety, in 
times when they withheld nothing from him. These, perhaps, 
were the " written troubles " that had been cut deepest into his 
brain. I think they were, and believe it the more, because it 
was never acknowledged. 

If he had erred in the primary indulgence out of which this 
sprang, he at least made noble atonement. During the most 
energetic years of manhood he laboured with one prize in view ; 
and he had just grasped it, as he fancied, securely, when all at 
once the vision was dissipated: he found himself naked and 
desolate as Job. How he nerved himself against the storm — 
how he felt and how he resisted it — how soberly, steadily, 
and resolvedly he contemplated the possibility of yet, by re- 
doubled exertions, in so far retrieving his fortunes, as that no 
man should lose by having trusted those for whom he had been 
pledged — how well he kept his vow, and what price it cost 



616 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

him to do so — all this the reader, I doubt not, appreciates fully. 
It seems to me that strength of character was never put to a 
severer test than when, for labours of love, such as his had 
hitherto almost always been — the pleasant exertion of genius 
for the attainment of ends that owed all their dignity and 
beauty to a poetical fancy — there came to be substituted the 
iron pertinacity of daily and nightly toil, in the discharge of 
a duty which there was nothing but the sense of chivalrous 
honour to make stringent. It is the fond indulgence of gay 
fancy in all the previous story that gives its true value and 
dignity to the voluntary agony of the sequel, when, indeed, he 
appears 

" Sapiens, sibique imperiosus ; 

Quern neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent; 

Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores, 

Fortis ; et in seipso totus, teres atque rotundus, 

Externi ne quid valeat per lseve morari ; 

In quern manca ruit semper Fortuna." 

The attentive reader will not deny that every syllable of this 
proud ideal has been justified to the letter. But though he 
boasted of stoicism, his heroism was something far better than 
the stoic's ; for it was not founded on a haughty trampling 
down of all delicate and tender thoughts and feelings. He 
lays his heart bare in his Diary ; and we there read, in charac- 
ters that will never die, how the sternest resolution of a phi- 
losopher may be at once quickened and adorned by the gentlest 
impulses of that spirit of love, which alone makes poetry the 
angel of life. This is the moment in which posterity will de- 
sire to fix his portraiture. But the noble exhibition was not a 
fleeting one ; it was not that a robust mind elevated itself by 
a fierce effort for the crisis of an hour. The martyrdom lasted 
with his days ; and if it shortened them, let us remember his 
own immortal words, — 

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife, 
To all the sensual world proclaim — 
One crowded hour of glorious life 
Is worth an age without a name." 

For the rest, I presume, it will be allowed that no human 
character, which we have the opportunity of studying with 
equal minuteness, had fewer faults mixed up in its texture. 
The grand virtue of fortitude, the basis of all others, was never 
displayed in higher perfection than in him ; and it Avas, as per- 
haps true courage always is, combined with an equally admi- 






HIS CHARACTER. 617 

rable spirit of kindness and humanity. His pride, if we must 
call it so, undebased by the least tincture of mere vanity, was 
intertwined with a most exquisite charity, and was not .incon- 
sistent with true humility. If ever the principle of kindliness 
was incarnated in a mere man, it was in him ; and real kindli- 
ness can never be but modest. In the social relations of life, 
where nien are most effectually tried, no spot can be detected 
in him. He was a patient, dutiful, reverent son ; a generous, 
compassionate, tender husband ; an honest, careful, and most 
affectionate father. Never was a more virtuous or a happier 
fireside than his. The influence of his mighty genius shad- 
owed it imperceptibly ; his calm good sense, and his angelic 
sweetness of heart and temper, regulated and softened a strict 
but paternal discipline. His children, as they grew up, under- 
stood by degrees the high privilege of their birth ; but the pro- 
foundest sense of his greatness never disturbed their confidence 
in his goodness. The buoyant play of his spirits made him 
sit young among the young ; parent and son seemed to live in 
brotherhood together; and the chivalry of his imagination 
threw a certain air of courteous gallantry into his relations 
with his daughters, which gave a very peculiar grace to the 
fondness of their intercourse. Though there could not be a 
gentler mother than Lady Scott, on those delicate occasions 
most interesting to young ladies, they always made their 
father the first confidant. 

Perhaps the most touching evidence of the lasting tenderness 
of his early domestic feelings was exhibited to his executors, 
when they opened his repositories in search of his testament, 
the evening after his burial. On lifting up his desk, we found 
arranged in careful order a series of little objects, which had 
obviously been so placed there that his eye might rest on them 
every morning before he began his tasks. These were the 
old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother's toilet, 
when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room — the silver 
taper-stand which the young advocate had bought for her with 
his first five-guinea fee — a row of small packets inscribed 
with her hand, and containing the hair of those of her offspring 
that had died before her — his father's snuff-box and etui-case 
— and more things of the like sort, recalling the " old familiar 
faces." The same feeling was apparent in all the arrangement 
of his private apartment. Pictures of his father and mother 
were the only ones in his dressing-room. The clumsy antique 
cabinets that stood there, things of a very different class from 
the beautiful and costly productions in the public rooms below, 



618 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

had all belonged to the furniture of George's Square. Even 
his father's rickety washing-stand, with all its cramped appur- 
tenances, though exceedingly unlike what a man of his very 
scrupulous habits would have selected in these days, kept its 
ground. The whole place seemed fitted up like a little chapel 
of the lares. 

Such a son and parent could hardly fail in any of the other 
social relations. No man was a firmer or more indefatigable 
friend. I knew not that he ever lost one ; and a few, with 
whom, during the energetic middle stage of life, from political 
differences or other accidental circumstances, he lived less 
familiarly, had all gathered round him, and renewed the full 
warmth of early affection in his later days. There was enough 
to dignify the connexion in their eyes ; but nothing to chill it 
on either side. The imagination that so completely mastered 
him when he chose to give her the rein, was kept under most 
determined control when any of the positive obligations of 
active life came into question. A high and pure sense of duty 
presided over whatever he had to do as a citizen and a magis- 
trate ; and as a landlord, he considered his estate as an exten- 
sion of his hearth. 

Of his political creed, the many who hold a different one 
will of course say that it was the natural fruit of his poetical 
devotion to the mere prejudice of antiquity ; and I am quite 
willing to allow that this must have had a great share in the 
matter — and that he himself would have been as little ashamed 
of the word prejudice as of the word antiquity. Whenever 
Scotland could be considered as standing separate on any ques- 
tion from the rest of the empire, he was not only apt, but eager 
to embrace the opportunity of again rehoisting, as it were, the 
old signal of national independence ; and I really doubt if any 
circumstance in his literary career gave him more personal 
satisfaction than the success of Malachi Malagrowther's Epis- 
tles. He confesses, however, in his Diary, that he was aware 
how much it became him to summon calm reason to battle 
imaginative prepossessions on this score ; and I am not aware 
that they ever led him into any serious practical error. He 
delighted in letting his fancy run wild about ghosts and witches 
and horoscopes — but I venture to say, had he sat on the judi- 
cial bench a hundred years before he was born, no man would 
have been more certain to give juries sound direction in esti- 
mating the pretended evidence of supernatural occurrences of 
any sort; and I believe, in like manner, that had any anti- 
English faction, civil or religious, sprung up in his own time 



HIS CHARACTER. 619 

in Scotland, he would have done more than any other living 
man could have hoped to do, for putting it down. He was on 
all practical points a steady, conscientious Tory of the school 
of William Pitt; who, though an anti-revolutionist, was cer- 
tainly anything but an anti-reformer. He rejected the inno- 
vations, in the midst of which he died, as a revival, under 
alarmingly authoritative auspices, of the doctrines which had 
endangered Britain in his youth, and desolated Europe through- 
out his prime of manhood. May the gloomy anticipations 
which hung over his closing years be unfulfilled ! But should 
they be so, let posterity remember that the warnings, and the 
resistance of his and other powerful intellects, were probably 
in that event the appointed means for averting a catastrophe 
in which, had England fallen, the whole civilised world must 
have been involved. 

Sir Walter received a strictly religious education under the 
eye of parents, whose virtuous conduct was in unison with the 
principles they desired to instil into their children. From 
the great doctrines thus recommended he appears never to 
have swerved ; but he must be numbered among the many who 
have incurred considerable risk of doing so, in consequence of 
the rigidity with which Presbyterian heads of families were 
used to enforce compliance with various relics of the puritani- 
cal observance. He took up, early in life, a repugnance to the 
mode in which public worship is conducted in the Scottish 
Establishment ; and adhered to the sister Church, whose sys- 
tem of government and discipline he believed to be the fairest 
copy of the primitive polity, and whose litanies and collects 
he reverenced as having been transmitted to us from the age 
immediately succeeding that of the Apostles. The few pas- 
sages in his Diaries in which he alludes to his own religious 
feelings and practices, shew clearly the sober, serene, and ele- 
vated frame of mind in which he habitually contemplated 
man's relations with his Maker; the modesty with which he 
shrunk from indulging either the presumption of reason, or the 
extravagance of imagination, in the province of Faith; his 
humble reliance on the wisdom and mercy of God ; and his 
firm belief that we are placed in this state of existence, not 
to speculate about another, but to prepare ourselves for it by 
active exertion of our intellectual faculties, and the constant 
cultivation of kindness and benevolence towards our fellow- 
men. 

But his moral, political, and religious character has suffi- 
ciently impressed itself upon the great body of his writings. 



620 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

He is indeed one of the few great authors of modern Europe 
who stand acquitted of having written a line that ought to 
have embittered the bed of death. His works teach the prac- 
tical lessons of morality and Christianity in the most captivat- 
ing form — unobtrusively and unaffectedly. And I think it is 
not refining too far to say, that in these works, as well as his 
whole demeanour as a man of letters, we may trace the happy 
effects — (enough has already been said as to some less fortu- 
nate and agreeable ones) — of his having written throughout 
with a view to something beyond the acquisition of personal 
fame. Perhaps no great poet ever made his literature so com- 
pletely ancillary to the objects and purposes of practical life. 
However his imagination might expatiate, it was sure to rest 
over his home. The sanctities of domestic love and social duty 
were never forgotten; and the same circumstance that most 
ennobles all his triumphs, affords also the best apology for his 
errors. 

From the first, his possession of a strong and brilliant genius 
was acknowledged ; and the extent of it seems to have been 
guessed by others, before he was able to persuade himself 
that he had claim to a place among the masters of literature. 
The ease with which he did everything, deceived him ; and 
he probably would never have done himself any measure of 
justice, even as compared with those of his own time, but for 
the fact, which no modesty could long veil, that whatever he 
did became immediately "the fashion" — the object of all but 
universal imitation. Even as to this, he was often ready to 
surmise that the priority of his own movement might have 
been matter of accident; and certainly nothing can mark 
the humility of his mind more strikingly than the style in 
which he discusses, in his Diary, the pretensions of the pig- 
mies that swarmed and fretted in the deep wake of his mighty 
vessel. To the really original writers among his contempo- 
raries he did full justice ; no differences of theory or taste 
had the least power to disturb his candour. In some cases he 
rejoiced in feeling and expressing a cordial admiration, where 
he was met by, at best, a cold and grudging reciprocity : and 
in others, his generosity was proof against not only the pri- 
vate belief but the public exposure of envious malignity. 
Lord Byron might well say that Scott could be jealous of no 
one ; but the immeasurable distance did not prevent many 
from being jealous of him. 

His propensity to think too well of other men's works 
sprung, of course, mainly, from his modesty and good-nature ; 



HIS CHARACTER. 621 

but the brilliancy of his imagination greatly sustained the 
delusion. It unconsciously gave precision to the trembling 
outline, and life and warmth to the vapid colours before him. 
This was especially the case as to romances and novels ; the 
scenes and characters in them were invested with so much of 
the " light within," that he would close with regret volumes 
which, perhaps, no other person, except the diseased glutton 
of the circulating library, ever could get half through. Where 
colder critics saw only a schoolboy's hollowed turnip with its 
inch of tallow, he looked through the dazzling spray of his 
own fancy, and sometimes the clumsy toy seems to have 
swelled almost into " the majesty of buried Denmark." 

These servile imitators are already forgotten, or will soon 
be so; but it is to be hoped that the spirit which breathes 
through his works may continue to act on our literature, and 
consequently on the character and manners of men. The race 
that grew up under the influence of that intellect can hardly 
be expected to appreciate fully their own obligations to it: 
and yet if we consider what were the tendencies of the minds 
and works that, but for his, must have been unrivalled in the 
power and opportunity to mould young ideas, we may picture 
to ourselves in some measure the magnitude of the debt we 
owe to a perpetual succession, through thirty years, of publi- 
cations unapproached in charm, and all instilling a high and 
healthy code ; a bracing, invigorating spirit ; a contempt of 
mean passions, whether vindictive or voluptuous ; humane 
charity, as distinct from moral laxity as from unsympathising 
austerity; sagacity too deep for cynicism, and tenderness 
never degenerating into sentimentality : animated throughout 
in thought, opinion, feeling, and style, by one and the same 
pure energetic principle — a pith and savour of manhood; 
appealing to whatever is good and loyal in our natures, and 
rebuking whatever is low and selfish. 

Had Sir Walter never taken a direct path in politics as a 
writer, the visible bias of his mind on such subjects must 
have had a great influence ; nay, the mere fact that such a 
man belonged to a particular side would have been a very 
important weight in the balance. His services, direct and 
indirect, towards repressing the revolutionary propensities of 
his age, were vast — far beyond the comprehension of vulgar 
politicians. 

On the whole, I have no doubt that, the more the details of 
his personal history are revealed and studied, the more power- 
fully will that be found to inculcate the same great lessons with 



622 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

his works. Where else shall we be taught better how pros- 
perity may be extended by beneficence, and adversity con- 
fronted by exertion? Where can we see the "follies of the 
wise" more strikingly rebuked, and a character more beauti- 
fully purified and exalted in the passage through affliction to 
death ? I have lingered so long over the details, that I have, 
perhaps, become, even from that circumstance alone, less quali- 
fied than more rapid surveyors may be to seize the effect in the 
mass. But who does not feel that there is something very in- 
vigorating as well as elevating in the contemplation? His 
character seems to belong to some elder and stronger period, 
than ours ; and, indeed, I cannot help likening it to the archi- 
tectural fabrics of other ages, which he most delighted in, where 
there is such a congregation of imagery and tracery, such end- 
less indulgence of whim and fancy, the sublime blending here 
with the beautiful, and there contrasted with the grotesque — 
half, perhaps, seen in the clear daylight, and half by rays tinged 
with the blazoned forms of the past — that one may be apt to 
get bewildered among the variety of particular impressions, 
and not feel either the unity of the grand design, or the 
height and solidness of the structure, until the door has been 
closed upon the labyrinth of aisles and shrines, and you survey 
it from a distance, but still within its shadow. 

And yet as, with whatever admiration his friends could not 
but regard him constantly when among them, the prevailing 
feeling was still love and affection, so is it now, and so must 
ever it be, as to his memory. It is not the privilege of every 
reader to have partaken in the friendship of a great and good 
man ; but those who have not, may be assured that the senti- 
ment, which the near homely contemplation of such a being 
inspires, is a thing entirely by itself. 

And now to conclude. — In the year 1832, France and Ger- 
many, as well as Britain, had to mourn over their brightest 
intellects. Goethe shortly preceded Scott, and Cuvier followed 
him : and with these mighty lights were extinguished many 
others of no common order — among the rest, Crabbe and 
Mackintosh. 

Of the persons closely connected with Sir Walter Scott, and 
often named accordingly in these pages, few remain. James 
Ballantyne was on his deathbed when he heard of his great 
friend and patron's death. The Ettrick Shepherd died in 
1835 ; George Thomson, the happy " Dominie Thompson," of 
the happy days of Abbotsford, in 1838; William Laidlaw, 
after 1832, had the care first of the Seaforth, and then of 



DEATH OF HIS CHILDREN. 623 

the Balnagowan estates, in Ross-shire, as factor : but being 
struck with paralysis in August 1844, retired to the farm- 
house of his excellent brother James at Contin, and died 
there in May 1845. Mr. Morritt, to whom the larger Memoirs 
of his friend were inscribed, died at Rokeby on the 12th of 
July 1843 : loved, venerated, never to be forgotten. William 
Clerk of Eldin, admired through life for talents and learning, 
of which he has left no monument, died at Edinburgh in Janu- 
ary 1847. 

But why extend this catalogue ? Sixteen years have passed 
— the generation to which Scott belonged have been gathered 
to their fathers. Of his own children none now survives. Miss 
Anne Scott received at Christmas 1832 a grant of L.200 per 
annum from the privy purse of King William IV. But her 
name did not long burden the pension list. Her constitution 
had been miserably shattered in the course of her long and 
painful attendance, first on her mother's illness, and then on 
her father's ; and perhaps reverse of fortune, and disappoint- 
ments of various sorts connected with that, had also heavy 
effect. From the day of Sir Walter's death, the strong stimu- 
lus of duty being lost, she too often looked and spoke like one 

" Taking the measure of an unmade grave." 

After a brief interval of disordered health, she contracted a 
brain fever, which carried her off abruptly. She died in my 
house in the Regent's Park on the 25th June 1833, and her re- 
mains are placed in the New Cemetery in the Harrow Road. 

The adjoining grave holds those of her nephew John Hugh 
Lockhart, who died 15th December 1831 ; and also those of my 
wife Sophia, who expired after a long illness, which she bore with 
all possible meekness and fortitude, on the 17th of May 1837. 
Of all the race she most resembled her father in countenance, 
in temper, and in manners. 

Charles Scott, whose spotless worth had tenderly endeared 
him to the few who knew him intimately, and whose industry 
and accuracy were warmly acknowledged by his professional 
superiors, on Lord Berwick's recall from the Neapolitan Em- 
bassy resumed his duties as a clerk in the Foreign Office, and 
continued in that situation until the summer of 1841. Sir John 
M'Neill, G.C.B., being then intrusted with a special mission 
to the Court of Persia, carried Charles with him as attache and 
private secretary ; but the journey on horseback through Asia 
Minor was trying for his never robust frame ; and he contracted 
an inflammatory disorder, which cut him off at Teheran, almost 



624 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 

immediately on his arrival there — October 28, 1841. He had 
reached his 36th year. His last hours had every help that kind- 
ness and skill could yield : for the Ambassador had for him the 
affection of an elder brother, and the physician, Dr. George 
Joseph Bell (now also gone), had been his schoolfellow, and 
through life his friend. His funeral in that remote place was 
so attended as to mark the world-wide reputation of his father. 
By Sir John M'JSTeill's care, a small monument with a suitable 
inscription was erected over his untimely grave. 

Walter, who succeeded to the baronetcy, proceeded to Madras 
in 1839, as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 15th Hussars ; and sub- 
sequently commanded that regiment. He was beloved and 
esteemed in it by officers and men as much, I believe, as any 
gentleman ever was in any corps of the British army ; and 
there was no officer of his rank who stood higher in the opinion 
of the heads of his profession. He had begun life with many 
advantages — a very handsome person, and great muscidar 
strength — a sweet and even temper, and talents which in the 
son of any father but his would have been considered brilliant. 
His answers, when examined as a witness before a celebrated 
Court-Martial in Ireland in 1834, were indeed universally ad- 
mired : — whoever had known his father, recognised the head 
and the heart : and in his letters from India, especially his 
descriptions of scenery and sport, there occur many passages 
which, for picturesque effect and easy playful humour, would 
have done no discredit even to his father's pen. Though 
neglectful of extra-professional studies in his earlier days, 
he had in after-life read extensively, and made himself, in 
every sense of the term, an accomplished man. The library 
for the soldiers of his corps was founded by him : the care of 
it was a principal occupation of his later years. His only 
legacy out of his family was one of L.100 to this library ; 
and his widow, well understanding what he felt towards it, 
directed that a similar sum should be added in her own name. 
Sir Walter having unwisely exposed himself in a tiger-hunt in 
August 1846, was on his return to his quarters at Bangalore, 
smitten with fever, which ended in liver disease. He was 
ordered to proceed to England, and died near the Cape of 
Good Hope, on board the ship Wellesley, February the 8th, 
1847. Lady Scott conveyed his remains to this country, and 
they were interred in the paternal aisle at Dryburgh on the 
4th of May following, in the presence of the few survivors of his 
father's friends and many of his own. Three officers who had 
served under him, and were accidentally in Britain, arrived from 



DEATH OF HIS CHILDREN. 625 

great distances to pay him the last homage of their respect. He 
had never had any child ; and with him the baronetcy expired. 

The children of illustrious men begin the world with great 
advantages, if they know how to use them : but this is hard 
and rare. There is risk that in the flush of youth, favourable 
to all illusions, the filial pride may be twisted to personal 
vanity. When experience checks this misgrowth, it is apt 
to do so with a severity that shall reach the best sources of 
moral and intellectual developement. The great sons of great 
fathers have been few. It is usual to see their progeny smiled 
at through life for stilted pretension, or despised, at best pitied, 
for an inactive inglorious humility. The shadow of the oak is 
broad, but noble plants seldom rise within that circle. It 
was fortunate for the sons of Scott that his day darkened in 
the morning of theirs. The sudden calamity anticipated the 
natural effect of observation and the collisions of society and 
business. All weak unmanly folly was nipt in the bud, and 
soon withered to the root. They were both remarkably modest 
men, but in neither had the better stimulus of the blood been 
arrested. In aspect and manners they were unlike each other : 
the elder tall and athletic, the model of a cavalier, with a gen- 
erous frankness : the other slender and delicate of frame, in 
bearing of a womanly gentleness and reserve ; but in heart 
and mind none more akin. The affection of all the family, but 
especially perhaps of the brothers, for each other, kept to the 
end all the warmth of undivided childhood. When Charles 
died, and Walter knew that he was left alone of all his father's 
house, he evidently began to droop in spirit. It appeared to me 
from his letters that he thenceforth dreaded rather than desired 
a return to Scotland and Abbotsford. His only anxiety was 
that his regiment might be marched towards the Punjaub. 

The only descendants of the Poet now alive are my son, 
Walter Scott Lockhart, (a lieutenant in the army,) who, as his 
uncle's heir of entail, has lately received permission to assume 
the additional surname of Scott; — and his sister, Charlotte 
Harriet Jane, married in August 1847 to James Robert Hope, 
Barrister, second son of the late General the Honourable Sir 
Alexander Hope, G.C.B. 1 

1 Walter Scott Lockhart Scott died at Versailles, on the 10th of January 
1853, and was buried in the cemetery of Notre Dame there. 

John Gibson Lockhart, his father, and the author of this Biography, 
died at Abbotsford on the 25th of November 1854, and was buried in Dry- 
burgh Abbey, at the feet of Walter Scott. 

Mrs. Hope, on the death of her brother, succeeded to the estate of 
Abbotsford, and, with her husband, assumed the name of Scott, in addi- 
2 s 



626 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

In the Avinter succeeding the Poet's death, his sons and my- 
self, as his executors, endeavoured to make such arrangements 
as were within our power for completing the great object of 
his own wishes and fatal exertions. 

We found the remaining principal sum of commercial debt to be nearly 
L.54,000. L. 22, 000 had been insured upon his life ; there were some 
monies in the hands of the Trustees, and Mr. Cadell very handsomely 
offered to advance to us the balance, about L. 30, 000, that we might with- 
out further delay settle with the body of creditors. 

This was effected accordingly on the 2d of February 1833 ; Mr. Cadell 
accepting, as his only security, the right to the profits accruing from Sir 
Walter's copyright property and literary remains, until such time as this 
new and consolidated obligation should be discharged. Besides his com- 
mercial debt, Sir Walter left also one of L.10,000, contracted by himself 
as an individual, when struggling to support Constable in December 1825, 
and secured by mortgage on the lands of Abbotsford. And, lastly, the 
library and museum, presented to him in free gift by his creditors in De- 
cember 1830, were bequeathed to his eldest son, with a burden to the ex- 
tent of L.5000, which sum he designed to be divided between his younger 
children, as already explained in an extract from his diary. His will pro- 
vided that the produce of his literary property, in case of its proving suffi- 
cient to wipe out the remaining debt of the firm, should then be applied 
to the extinction of these mortgages ; and thereafter, should this also be 
accomplished, divided equally among his surviving family. 

Various meetings were held soon after his death with a view 
to the erection of Monuments to his memory ; and the records of 
these meetings, and their results, are adorned by many of the 
noblest and most distinguished names both of England and of 
Scotland. In London, the Lord Bishop of Exeter, Sir Eobert 
Peel, and Sir John Malcolm, took a prominent part as speakers : 
and the result was a subscription amounting to about L.10,000 ; 
but a part of this was embezzled by a young person rashly 
appointed to the post of secretary, who carried it with him to 
America, where he soon afterwards died. The noblemen and 
gentlemen who subscribed to this fund adopted a suggestion — 

tion to that of Hope. She died at Edinburgh on the 26th of October 1858, 
leaving three children, viz. : — 

" Mary Monica," born on the 2d of October 1852. 

" Walter Michael," born on the 2d of June 1857. 

"Margaret Anne," born on the 17th of September 1858. 

Of these, Margaret died on the 3d, and Walter on the 11th of December 
1858, and their remains lie beside those of their mother (and of their 
father, J. R. Hope-Scott, who died April 29, 1873) in the vaults of St. 
Margaret's Convent, Edinburgh. " Mary Monica," who thus became the 
only surviving descendant of Walter Scott, married in 1874 the Hon. J. C. 
Maxwell, who assumed the name of Scott, and has, with other issue, 
Walter Joseph, born 1875. 



MONUMENTS TO HIS MEMORY. 627 

(which originated, I believe, with Lord Francis Egerton, now 
Earl of Ellesmere, and the Honourable John Stuart Wortley, 
now Lord Wharnecliffe) — that, in place of erecting a cenotaph 
in Westminster Abbey, or a statue or pillar elsewhere, the 
most suitable and respectful tribute that could be paid to Sir 
Walter's memory would be to discharge all the encumbrances 
upon Abbotsford, and entail the House, with its library and 
other articles of curiosity collected by him, together with the 
lands which he had planted and embellished, upon the heirs 
of his name for ever. The sum produced by the subscription, 
however, proved inadequate to the realisation of such a scheme ; 
and after much consultation, it was at length settled that the 
money in the hands of the committee (between L.7000 and 
L.8000) should be employed to liquidate the debt upon the 
library and museum, and whatever might be over towards the 
mortgage on the lands. This arrangement enabled the Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Sir Walter Scott to secure, in the shape origi- 
nally desired, the permanent preservation at least of the house 
and its immediate appurtenances, as a memorial of the tastes 
and habits of the founder. 

Such was the state of matters when the Lieutenant-Colonel embarked 
for India : and in his absence no further steps could well be taken. Upon 
his death, it was found that, notwithstanding the very extensive demand 
for his father's writings, there still remained a considerable debt to Mr. 
Caclell, and also the greater part of the old debt secured on the lands. 
Mr. Cadell then offered to relieve the guardians of the young inheritor of 
that great name from much anxiety and embarrassment, by accepting, 
in full payment of the sum due to himself, and also in recompense for his 
taking on himself the final obliteration of the heritable bond, a transfer- 
ence to him of the remaining claims of the family over Sir Walter's writ- 
ings, together with the result of some literary exertions of the only sur- 
viving executor. This arrangement was completed in May 1847 ; and the 
estate, as well as the house and its appendages, became at last unfettered. 
The rental is small ; but I hope and trust, that as long as any of the 
blood remains, reverent care will attend over the guardianship of a pos- 
session associated with so many high and noble recollections. On that 
subject the gallant soldier who executed the entail expressed also in his 
testament feelings of the devoutest anxiety : and it was, I am well assured, 
in order that no extraneous obstacle might thwart the fulfilment of his 
pious wishes, that Mr. Cadell crowned a long series of kind services to 
the cause and the memory of Sir Walter Scott, by the very handsome 
proposition of 1847. 

Abbotsford, after his own immortal works, is the best monu- 
ment of its founder. But at Edinburgh also, soon after his 
death, a meeting was held with a view to the erection of some 
visible memorial in his native city ; the prominent speakers 



628 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

were the late Marquess of Lothian, the late Earl of Dalhousie, 
the Earl of Rosebery, Lord Jeffrey, and Professor Wilson; 
and the subscription then begun realised a sum of L.8000, 
which by subsequent exertions reached no less than L.15,000. 
The result may now be seen in a truly magnificent monument, 
conspicuous to every visitor of Scott's " own romantic town " 
— a lofty Gothic cross, enclosing and surmounting a marble 
statue of the Poet, which, as well as many happy relievos on 
the exterior, does great honour to the chisel of Mr. Steele. 

In Glasgow, also, there was a meeting in 1832 : the subscrip- 
tions there reached L.1200 : and in the chief square of that 
city, already graced with statues of two illustrious natives, 
James Watt and Sir John Moore, there is now a lofty pillar, 
surmounted with a statue of Sir Walter Scott. 

Finally, in the market-place of Selkirk there has been set 
up, at the cost of local friends and neighbours, a statue in free- 
stone, by Mr. Alexander Ritchie of Musselburgh, with this 
inscription : — 

"erected in august 1839, 
in proud and affectionate remembrance 

OF 

SIE WALTER SCOTT, BARONET, 

SHERIFF OF THIS COUNTY 
FROM 1800 TO 1832. 

By Yarrow's stream still let me stray, 
Though none should guide my feeble way ; 
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break, 
Although it chill my withered cheek." 

In what manner to cover the grave itself at Dryburgh re- 
quired some consideration, in consequence of the state of the 
surrounding and overhanging ruins. Sir F. Chantrey recom- 
mended a block of Aberdeen granite, so solid as to resist even 
the fall of the ivied roof of the aisle, and kindly sketched the 
shape ; in which he followed the stone coffin of the monastic 
ages — especially the "marble stone" on which Deloraine 
awaits the opening of the wizard's vault in the Lay. This 
drawing had just been given to Allan Cunningham, wdien our 
great sculptor was smitten with a fatal apoplexy. As soon as 
pressing business allowed, " honest Allan " took up the instruc- 
tions of his dying friend; the model was executed under his 
eye : and the letter in which he reported its completion was, I 



MONUMENTS TO HIS MEMOBY. 629 

am informed, the very last that he penned. He also had 
within a few hours a paralytic seizure, from which he never 
rose. The inscriptions on this simple but graceful tomb are 
merely of name and date. 

The authentic likenesses of Sir Walter Scott, as far as I have 
been enabled to trace them, are as follows : — 

1. A very good miniature, done at Bath, when he was in the 
fifth or sixth year of his age, was given by him to his daughter 
Sophia, and is now in my possession — the artist's name un- 
known. The child appears with long flowing hair, the colour a 
light chestnut; a deep open collar, and scarlet dress. It is 
nearly a profile ; the outline wonderfully like what it was to 
the last ; the expression of the eyes and mouth very striking — 
grave and pensive. 

2. A miniature sent by Mrs. Scott to Miss Carpenter, shortly 
before their marriage in 1797 — at Abbotsf ord. It is not a 
good work of art, and I know not who executed it. The hair 
is slightly powdered. 

3. The first oil painting, done for Lady Scott in 1805, by 
Saxon, was, in consequence of repeated applications for the 
purpose of being engraved, transferred by her to Messrs. Long- 
man & Co., and is now in their house in Paternoster Row. 
This is a very fine picture, representing, I have no doubt, most 
faithfully, the author of the Lay of the Last Minstrel. Length, 
three-quarters — dress black — hair nut-brown — the favourite 
bull-terrier Camp leaning his head on the knee of his master. 

4. The first picture by Eaeburn was done in 1808 for Con- 
stable, and passed, at the sale of his effects, into the hands of 
the Duke of Buccleuch. Scott is represented at full length, 
sitting by a ruined wall, with Camp at his feet — Hermitage 
Castle and the mountains of Liddesdale in the background. 
This noble portrait has been repeatedly engraved. Dress black 
— Hessian boots. — 5. The second full-length by Eaeburn 
(done a year later) is nearly a repetition ; but the painter had* 
some new sittings. Two greyhounds (Douglas and Percy) 
appear in addition to Camp, and the background gives the val- 
ley of the Yarrow, marking the period of Ashestiel and Mar- 
mion. This piece is at Abbotsford. 

6. A head in oil by Thomas Phillips, E.A., done in 1818 
for Mr. Murray, and now in Albermarle Street. The costume 
was, I think, unfortunately selected — a tartan plaid and open 
collar. This gives a theatrical air to what would otherwise 
have been a very graceful representation of Scott in the 47th 



630 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

year of his age. Mr. Phillips (for whom Scott had a warm 
regard, and who often visited him at Abbotsford) has caught a 
true expression not hit upon by any of his brethren — a smile 
of gentle enthusiasm. The head has a vivid resemblance to 
Sir Walter's eldest daughter, and also to his grandson John 
Hugh Lockhart. A duplicate was added by the late Earl 
Whitworth to the collection at Knowle. 

7. A head sketched in oil by Geddes — being one of his 
studies for a picture of the finding of the Scottish Regalia in 
1818 — is in the possession of Sir James Steuart of Allanbank, 
Baronet. It is nearly a profile — boldly drawn. 

8. The unrivalled portrait (three-quarters) by Sir Thomas 
Lawrence, painted for King George IV. in 1820, and now in 
the Corridor at Windsor Castle. The engraving by Robinson 
is masterly. 

9. A head by Sir Henry Raeburn — the last work of his 
hand — was done in 1822 for Lord Montagu, and is at Ditton 
Park : a massive strong likeness, heavy at first sight, but which 
grows into favour upon better acquaintance — the eyes very 
deep and fine. This picture has been well engraved in mezzo- 
tinto. 

10. A small three-quarters, in oil, done at Chiefswood, in 
August 1824, by Gilbert Stewart Newton, R.A., and presented 
by him to Mrs. Lockhart. This pleasing picture gives Sir 
Walter in his usual country dress — a green jacket and black 
neckcloth, with a leathern belt for carrying the forester's axe 
round the shoulders. It is the best domestic portrait ever 
done. A duplicate, in Mr. Murray's possession, was engraved 
for Finden's " Illustrations of Byron." 

11. A half-length, painted by C. R. Leslie, R.A., in 1824, 
for Mr. Ticknor of Boston, New England, is now in that gentle- 
man's possession. I never saw this picture in its finished state, 
but the beginning promised well, and I am assured it is worthy 
of the artist's high reputation. It has not been engraved — in 
this country I mean — but a reduced copy of it furnished an 
indifferent print for one of the Annuals. 

12. A small head was painted in 1826 by Mr. Knight, a 
young artist, patronised by Terry. This juvenile production, 
ill-drawn and feeble in expression, was engraved for Mr. 
Lodge's great work ! 

13. A half-length by Mr. Colvin Smith of Edinburgh, done 
in January 1828, for the artist's uncle, Lord Gillies. I never 
admired this picture; but it pleased many, perhaps better 
judges. Mr. Smith executed no less than fifteen copies for 



PICTURES, BUSTS, AND STATUES. 631 

friends of Sir Walter ; — among others, the Bishop of Llandaff 
(Copleston), the Chief-Commissioner Adam, and John Hope, 
now Lord Jnstice-Clerk of Scotland. 

14. A half-length done by Mr. Graham Gilbert in 1829, for 
the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 

15. An excellent half-length portrait, by John Watson Gor- 
don, R.A., done in March 1830, for Mr. Cadell. Scott is repre- 
sented sitting, with both hands resting on his staff — the 
stag-hound Bran on his left. 

16. A cabinet picture done at Abbotsford in 1831 by Francis 
Grant, R.A., — who had the advantage of a familiar knowledge 
of the subject, being an attached friend of the family. This 
interesting piece, which has armour and stag-hounds, was done 
for Lady Ruthven. 

17. I am sorry to say that I cannot express much approba- 
tion of the representation of Sir Walter introduced by Sir David 
Wilkie in his " Abbotsford Family ; " nor indeed are any of the 
likenesses in this graceful composition (1817) at all satisfactory 
to me, except only that of Sir Adam Fergusson, which is perfect. 
This is in Sir A.'s possession. — 18, 19, 20. Nor can I speak 
more favourably either of the head of Scott in Wilkie's " Arri- 
val of George IV. at Holyrood" (1822), or of that in Sir William 
Allan's picture of the "Ettrick Shepherd's Househeating" (1819). 
Allan has succeeded better in his picture of " The Author of 
Waverley in his Study ; " this was done shortly before Sir 
Walter's death. 

21. Mr. Edwin Landseer, R.A., has painted a full-length 
portrait, with the scenery of the Rhymer's Glen; and his famil- 
iarity with Scott renders this almost as valuable as if he had 
sat for it. This beautiful picture is in the gallery of Mr. Wells 
at Redleaf, Kent. 

I have given better evidence than my own as to the inimita- 
ble Bust done by Sir Francis Chantrey in 1820, and now in the 
library at Abbotsford. Previous to Sir Walter's death, the 
niche which this now occupies held a cast of the monumental 
effigy of Shakspeare, presented to him by George Bullock, with 
an elegant stand, having the letters W. S. in large relievo on 
its front. Anxiety to place the precious marble in the safest 
station induced the poet's son to make the existing arrange- 
ment on the day after his father's funeral. The propriety of 
the position is obvious ; but in case of misrepresentation here- 
after, it is proper to mention that it was not chosen by Sir 
Walter for an image of himself. As already stated, Chantrey 



632 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

sculptured, in 1828, for Sir Robert Peel, a bust possessing the 
character of a second original. Sir Walter's good-nature induced 
him to sit, at various periods of his life, to other sculptors of 
inferior standing and reputation. I am not aware, however, 
that any of their performances but two ever reached the dignity 
of marble. One of these, a very tolerable Avork, was done by 
Mr. Joseph about 1822, and is in the gallery of Mr. Burn Cal- 
lender, at Prestonhall, near Edinburgh. The other was mod- 
elled by Mr. Lawrence Macdonald, in the unhappy winter of 
1830. The period of the artist's observation would alone have 
been sufficient to render his efforts fruitless. 

The only statue executed during Sir Walter's lifetime, is 
that by John Greenshields in freestone. On first seeing this, 
an early companion of the Poet, Mr. Thomas Thomson, D.C.S., 
exclaimed, " A petrifaction of Scott ! " It is certainly a most 
meritorious work ; and I am well pleased that it has its station 
in Mr. Cadell's premises in St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh. 1 
The proprietor has adopted the inscription for Bacon's effigy 
at St. Alban's, and carved on the pedestal " Sic Sedebat." — 
Mr. Steele's noble marble statue for the Edinburgh Monument 
was erected in 1847. 

1 This statue was presented by the trustees of Mr. Cadell (who died in 
1849) to the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh, and is now placed in their 
Library. — 1852. 



INDEX. 



A. 

" Abbot, The," 3 vols., publication 
of, in 1820, 373. 

Abbotsford, description and purchase 
of, 209. New purchase of land added 
to, 228, 267, 274 ; purchase of Toft- 
field, and extent of territory in 1817, 
288. Hospitalities and sports at, 
360. The hunt, 369. Plans for com- 
pletion of, 384. " Century of Inven- 
tions " at, 417. Completion of, 432- 
435. Public access to, 435. Advance 
of L. 10,000 to Constable on the lands 
of, 473. The Library, 517. Feelings 
of domestics at, 522. Gift of the 
Library, furniture, &c. to Scott by 
creditors, 559. 

Abbotsford Club, 415. 

Hunt, 360, 471. 

Abercorn, Marchioness of, 152, 194. 

Marquis of, 152, 154, 194. 

Scott's visit to, 229. 

Abercrombie, Dr., 558, 563, 567. 

Abercromby, Lord, 35, 60. 

Aberdeen Advocates, 488. 

Abud & Co., London Jews, their harsh 
treatment of Scott, 524. 

Adam, Dr. Alex., Rector of the High 
School of Edinburgh, 21. 

Adam, Admiral, 506, 507. 

Sir Frederick, 530, 593. 

General, 530. 

Lord Chief-Commissioner, at a 

Carlton House Dinner, 254. His 
formation of the Blair- Adam Club, 
374, 375. 

415, 506, 549, 559. 

Adolphus, J. L. Esq., visits Abbots- 
ford, 421; his reminiscences of, 421. 
Visits Abbotsford in 1827, 516. Ex- 
tracts from his memoranda, ib. 580. 

Advocates, usages of the Faculty of, 
613. 

Alexander, Emperor of Russia, Scott 
presented to, 260. 

Mrs., of Ballochmyle, 536. 

Allan, Sir William, R. A., 307, 363, 583, 
606. His portraits of Scott, 631. 



Allan, Thomas, Esq., 559. 

Altrive Farm, 172. 

Alvanley, Lady, 215. Letter to, 497. 

American tourists at Abbotsford, 330. 

MS. tragedy, 327. 

axe 432. 

Ancestry of Scott, 2, 609. 

" Anne of Geierstein," 3 vols., 439. 

Publication of, in May, 1829, 542. 
Annual Festivals, 503. 
" Antiquary, The," 3 vols., 267. 

Publication of, 271, passim, 274. 
Antiquity, Scott's love of, 611. 
" Apology for Tales of Terror." See 

Tales. 
Apennines, the, 596. 
Arden, Hon. Catherine, 598. 
Aristocracy, Scottish, Scott's romantic 

idealisation of, 613. 
Arkwright, Mrs., her musical compo- 
sitions, 535. 
Ashestiel, house of, 114; description 

of, 116. 
209, 211 ; departure of Scott from, 

214. 
Ashley, Hon. William, 590. 
Atkinson. Mr., architect, 384, 385. 

" AUCHINDRANE, OR THE AYRSHIRE 

Tragedy," publication of, 547. 
Auldjo, Mr., Naples, 590. 



B. 



Baillie, Miss Joanna, Scott's intro- 
duction to, 143. 

Letters to, 171, 172, 179, 201, 210, 

372, 389, 534. 

her " Family Legend," 195. 

Dr. Matthew, 143. 

Baird, the Very Rev. Principal, 607. 

Ballantyne, James, his first acquaint- 
ance with Scott at Kelso, 88. Printer 
of the "Apology for Tales of Ter- 
ror," 89; and of the Border Min- 
strelsy, 99. Removes to Edinburgh, 
103. Partnership with Scott. 126. 
Sketch of, 181 ; interview with Scott, 
249 ; and reminiscences of 1815, 264. 



633 



634 



INDEX. 



Lines to, on " Rob Roy," 293. His 
Dinners in St. John Street on the 
appearance of a new novel, 310. 
Reminiscence of the composition of 
the "Bride of Lammermoor," 342. 
Interview with the Earl of Buchan, 
343. His Criticism of " St. Ronan's 
Well," 428; and "The Betrothed," 
440. Alarm of his stability, 463. 
Sketch of his business habits, 466. 
Catastrophe of affairs, 486. State of 
parties concerned, 482. Death of 
his wife, 540. Alienation of Scott 
from him in part, 541. Unpleasant 
discussions with Scott, 565, passim, 
558, 573. His last meeting with Scott, 
ib.; death, 622. 

Ballantyne, Letters to, 209, 221, 247, 
557. 

121, 195, 198, 200, 221, 227, 247, 

249, 263, 274, 327, 394, 415, 429, 475, 
526, 550, 570. 

Ballantyne, John, sketch of, 180; his 
partnership with Scott, 187; pub- 
lishes " The Lady of the Lake," 198 ; 
and other Works, 203. Embarrass- 
ment of affairs in 1813, 225, passim, 
232. His position with Scott and 
Constable in 1816, 274. Anecdotes 
of, at Abbotsford, 286. His bonus 
in the Waverley Novels, 287. Nego- 
tiation with Constable for the sec- 
ond "Tales of my Landlord," 295. 
Palms his book-stock on Constable, 
295. His domestic establishment, 
and dinners at "Harmony Hall," 
313. Anecdote of him at Paris, 315. 
Amanuensis to Scott, 336. A Sun- 
day at Abbotsford, 351. His illness, 
376. Walton Hall, ib. His Novel- 
ists' Library, 377. His last will, and 
death in June, 1821, 380. Anecdote 
of him, 381. Retrospections of, 465- 
469. 

Letters to, 226, 229, 231. 

189, 243, 273, 334, 336, 389, 393 n. 

" Ballantyne's Novelists' Li- 
brary," 170; Scott's Contributions 
to, 377, 380, 389. 

Bank of Scotland, the, in Scott's 
affairs, 484. 

Banking System of Scotland and Eng- 
land, 485. 

Bankrupt, actual and legal, 484. 

Bannatyne Club, Scott its founder and 
president, 413, 506. 

" Bannatyne George, Life of," 527. 

Barbauld, Mrs., 67. 

Barham frigate, 587 ; conveys Scott to 
Italy, 588. 

Baronetcy conferred on Scott, 359. 



Barrow, Sir John, 587. 

Bath, Scott's reminiscences of, in in- 
fancy, 15. 

Bathurst, Colonel Seymour, 589. 

Right Honourable Earl, 500. 

" Bear of Bradwardine," 61, 63. 

Beattie of Meikledale, anecdote of, 25. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 191, 233. 

Beauty, female, 538. 

Beggars and carters, 574, 575. 

Behn's, Mrs., Novels, 390. 

Belches, Miss Stuart, of Invermay, 
Scott's first love, 49; marries Sir 
William Forbes, 69. 

Bell, John, Esq., surgeon, 67. 

Bemerside, 580, 607. 

Ben Jonson, lines of, 392, 396. 

Berwick, Lord, at Naples, 590, 623. 

"Betrothed, The." See "Tales of 
the Crusaders." 

Bible, the family, at Abbotsford, ex- 
tracts from, 78, 347. 

presented to Scott by his mother, 

347. 

Biggar, town of, 574. 

" Black Art," story of the, 176. 

"Black Dwarf, The," suggested 
alteration of, 276; publication of, 
277, passim; opinions of , 278,279. 

Blackhouse, farm of, 95. 

Scott's visit to, 137. 

Blacklock, Rev. Dr., 24. 

Blackwood, William, publisher of 
" Tales of my Landlord," first series, 
276. His criticism of the Black 
Dwarf, 276, 278, 294, 486. 

Blackwood's Magazine, 285, 294, 321 n., 
486. 

Blair- Adam Club, 375. See Adam. 

Blair, Rev. Dr. Hugh, 20 n. 

Blake, Right Hon. Anthony, 444. 

Blarney, the groves of, visited, 452. 

Blucher, Field-Marshal, meeting of 
Scott with, 261. 

Boarding-school, 179. 

Boldside, festival at, 368. 

Bolton, John, Esq., visited at Storrs 
by Scott, Canning, Wordsworth, 
etc., 452. 

Mr., of Birmingham, anecdote of, 

383, 384. 

"Bonnie Dundee," song of, 476. 

"Border Antiquities of Scot- 
land," 287 ; publication of, in 1818, 
2 vols. 4to, 334. 

Sharpshooters raised by Scott, 

346. 

Borthwick Water, 138. 

Bos well, Sir Alex, of Auchinleck, 
300, 476. 

Bothwell Castle, 87. 






INDEX. 



635 



Bourmont, Marshall, 553. 
Bower, John, Melrose, 289, 290. 
Boyle, Right Hon. David, 38. 
Bracciano, Castle of, 595. 
Braxfield, Lord, 357. 
Breakfasting, Scott's mode of, 307. 
Brewster, Sir David, 378. 

Mrs. Dr., 562. 

"Bride of Lammermoor, The," 

335, 347 ; composed under severe ill- 
ness, 336, 342 ; publication of, in 

1818, 342, 345. 
"Bridal of Triermain, The," Er- 

skine's alleged paternity of, 217, 223 ; 

publication of, 223. 
Brougham, Henry, now Lord, 163. 
" Broughton's Saucer," anecdote of, 

40//. 
Bruce, John, Professor of Ethics, 29. 

John. See "John of Sky e." 

Robert, Esq., Sheriff of Argyle, 

253, 262. 
Bruhl, Count, 70. 
Buccleuch, Henry, third Duke of, 82, 

90, 172. 
Charles, fourth Duke of, his loan 

of L.4000 to Scott, 230 ; letter from, 

on the death of the Duchess, 241; 

death of, 341. 

221, 229, 230, 231, 267, 282, 295. 

Harriet, Duchess of, her death, 

24L 
Walter, fifth Duke of, 403, 460, 

584. 
Buchan, David, Earl of, absurd con- 
duct of, during Scott's illness, 343; 

anecdote of, with the Duchess of 

Gordon, 844. 

Dr. James, 19. 

Buchanan, H. Macdonald, Esq., of 

Drummalkiln, visited by Scott, 191 ; 

generous conduct of, in Scott's 

affairs, 525. 

148, 188, 500. 

Miss Macdonald, 306. 

Mr., of Cambusmore, 60. 

Bullock, Mr. George, 631. 

" Buonaparte, Life of," 9 vols. 

projected, 440, 442; progress of, 

454; letter on the composition of, 

509; publication of, in June, 1827. 

Goethe's remarks on, 512. 
" Burger's Lenore," translation of, by 

Taylor, 67, and by Scott, 67. 
" Burning the Water," for salmon, 

135, 369. 
Burns, Robert, Scott's reminiscences 

of, 31. Lines of, parodied, 568. 

201, 4:56. 

Captain James Glencairn, visits 

Abbotsford, 582. 



Business habits of Scott, remarks on 
the, 613. 

Byron, Lord, his " English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers," 191. " Childe 
Harold," 211, 223, 281. Correspond- 
ence with Scott on " Marmion," 212- 
214; invitation to Abbotsford, 213; 
the "Giaour," 249. Meeting with 
Scott, 252, and exchange of presents, 
253. His last meeting with Scott, 
262. Remarks on his countenance, 
298. His "Cain," dedicated to Scott, 
395, 476. His Ravenna Diary, 464. 
His Poetry, 310, 592. 

420, 455, 456, 487. 

Lady, 298. 



C. 



Cadell, Robert, partner of Con- 
stable & Co., 146 n. Recollections 
of the success of " The Lady of the 
Lake," 199. His purchase of the 
copyright of " Halidon Hill," 396. 
Scott's estimate of him, 475, 493. 
Communicates catastrophe of the 
affairs of Scott, Constable & Co., and 
the Ballantynes, 480. Becomes in 
1826 sole publisher of Scott's Works, 
493 ; and partner with Scott in the 
re-purchase of the Waverley copy- 
rights, 528. Unpleasant discussions 
with Scott, 555. passim, 561. His 
politics, 557. Scott's residence with, 
in Athol Crescent, 562, 563. Visit 
to Abbotsford in 1831, 581. Arrival 
in London on Scott's last illness, 597. 
Accompanies him to Edinburgh and 
Abbotsford, 600. Advances of money 
in payment of Scott's debts, 626, 627. 

. Letters to, 392, 545, 572. 

Extracts from his memoranda 

regarding Scott's industry, and John 
Ballantyne, 393 n. 

376, 475, 480, 526, 551, 570, 631, 

632. 

Mrs. R., 562. 

Miss, Scott's present to, 593. 

" Cadyow Castle," ballad of, 97. 

Cambridge, 360. 

Campbell, Lady Charlotte, 82, 97. 

Mr. Alexander, 37. 

Sir Colin, 587. 

Sir Islay, 156. 

Thomas, Esq., his " Gertrude," 

291. His timidity in poetry, 291. 

97, 182, 201, 288. 

Canning, Right Hon. George, meets 
Scott, Wordsworth, etc., at Storrs, 
452. His death, 516 ; and character, 
ib. 



636 



INDEX. 



Canning, 87, 143, 190. 
Caribs, feasts of the, 503. 
"Carleton's, Captain George, 

Memoirs," 169. 
Carlisle Castle, " Maclvor's very dun- 
geon," 538. Anecdote, 538. 
Inn at, 263. Revisited in 1823, 

538. 
Carlton House, dinners at, 251, 256. 
Carlyle, Rev. Dr., Inveresk, 297. 
Caroline, Princess of Wales, Scott's 

introduction to, 113, 152. 

Queen, trial of, 501. 

Carpenter, Miss, Scott introduced to, 

at Gilsland, 76 ; and married to, 78. 

Note regarding her origin, 78. 

629. 

Carters and beggars, 571, 575. 

" Cary, Sir Robert, Memoirs of," 

169. 
"Casket, The," a proposal to Scott 

for, 536. 
"Castle Dangerous," 570, 572, 576, 

578 ; publication of, in 1831, 583. 
Castle Street, No. 39, Edinburgh, 

Scott's removal to, 79. Description 

of his "Den" in, 208. Sunday 

dinners at, 306. His feelings on 

final departure from, 487, 488. 
Cathcart, Earl of, Scott at a dinner 

given by, 260. 
Catholic Emancipation, 156. Scott's 

view of, 451 ; writes in favour of, 

541. 
Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, 

450. 
Catrail, leap of the, 471. 
Cauldshiels Loch, the, 228, 288, 369, 

581. 
Cay, Robert Hodgson, Esq. 66. 
Celtic Club, 400. 

Society of Edinburgh, 378. 

Centuries, middle of, 586. 

Cervantes, 281, 583. 

Chain-bridges, contrast of French and 

Scotch, 565. 
" Chaldee Manuscript," 321. 
Chalmers, George, Esq., London, 17 n., 

66, 71. 
Champaign, exchange of, for Scott's 

works, 413. 
Chantrey, Sir Francis, his bust of 

Scott, 358, 383, 384, 631, 632. De- 
signs the monument to Scott at 

Dryburgh, 628, 629. 
Charles X., of France, at Holyrood, 

552. 

XII., of Sweden, portrait of, 350. 

Charpentier, J. C. and Madame, of 

Lyons, parents of Lady Scott, 76, 

103. 



Charpentier, Charles, brother of Lady 
Scott, 76, 105. Death of, 333. 

Cheney, Edward, Esq., his memoranda 
of Scott at Rome, 594. 

"Cherokee Lovers," American MS. 
Tragedy, 327. 

Chiefswood Cottage, 352. The resi- 
dence of Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart, 
385. 

Children, the, of illustrious men, posi- 
tion and fate of, 625. 

of Scott, ib. 

"Chronicles of the Canongate," 
first series, 493; publication of in 
2 vols., November, 1827, 523, 526. 

Second series, 3 vols. Tales with- 
drawn from, 527. See "Fair Maid 
of Perth." 

Church, the, of Scotland at the Refor- 
mation, 328. 

Clanship, Scott's ambition of, 610, 611. 
His ruling passion, 614. 

Clarke, Rev. Dr. J. S., 231. 

Clarkson, Dr. Ebenezer, of Selkirk, 
526, 563, 601. 

James, Esq., surgeon, 554, 567, 

601, 601. 

Claverhouse. See Viscount Dundee. 

Cleeve, Rev. Mr., 15. 

Clephane, Mrs. Maclean, of Torloisk, 
306. 

Clergyman's daughter, account of one, 
292. 

Clerk, Sir John and Lady, 35. 

John, Esq., of Eldin, 144, 272. 

John, Lord Eldin, 272, 415. 

William, Esq., an early friend of 

Scott, 35, 41, 50; character of, 46; 
letters to, 51 ; accompanies Scott 
to Craigball, the original of Tully* 
Veolan, 61, and to Blair-Adam, 375. 
His dinners, 506. Letter of Scott to, 
on the affair of General Gourgaud, 
519. His death, 623. 

563. 

Clovenford Inn, 95, 110. 

Clubs, Scott a member of, 413-415. 

Clyde, Firth of, 443. 

Cobbler of Kelso, 286. 

Cockburn, Henry Lord, 304, 506, 605. 

Mrs., her lines on Sir Walter 

Scott's father, 7. 

Colburn, Mr. Henry, 530. 

Coleridge, S. T., 190. Scott's opinion 
of his genius. 326. 

Commercial affairs in 1825, 461, 462; 
remarks on the connexion of Scott 
with, 469. 

Constable, Archibald, publishes Scott's 
" Lay of the Last Minstrel," 125 ; and 
"Marmion," 155. Sketch of him, 



INDEX. 



637 



182. Temporary alienation of Scott 
from, 180, 186. Bequest of Miss 
Seward's MS. Letters to, 197. Grad- 
ual reconciliation with Scott, 198, 
226, 235. Relief of Ballantyne & 
Co., 226. Offer for the copyright 
of "Waverley," 237. His position 
with Scott in 1816, 274. Visits 
Ahbotsford, and suggests the title of 
" Rob Roy," 286. Negotiations for 
the second " Tales of my Landlord," 

294. Relieves Ballantyne of stock, 

295. His social intercourse with the 
Ballantynes — anecdotes and nick- 
names, 314. Purchase of Scott's 
copyrights in 1818 for L.12,000, 334. 
A Sunday at Ahbotsford, 351. His 
titles of " The Abbot " and " Kenil- 
worth," 375, 376. Views regarding 
" The Novelists' Library," 389. Sec- 
ond purchase of copyrights for 
5000 guineas, 393; and of four un- 
named works of fiction, 394, 418. 
Letter to Scott on the publication 
of "Nigel," 297. His ambition of 
success, 398. Estate of Balneil, 398. 
Third purchase of copyrights for 
5000 guineas, 417. Gift to Scott, 
and receipt of the "Waverley MSS.," 
434. Visit to Ahbotsford, and pro- 
jection of his "Miscellany," 438, 
441. *Rumours of the instability of 
his firm, 462. His connexion with 
the Ballantynes, 467, passim, 470. 
Scott's advance to him of L. 10,000, 
473. Scheme of republishing the 
Waverley Novels, 477. Interview 
with Mr. Lockhart in London, 477, 
478. Catastrophe of affairs, 480. 
State of parties concerned, 482. 
Change of Scott's views regarding 
him, 493, 494. His death and char- 
acter, 515. 

Constable, Letters to, 413, 477. 

92, 145 n., 171, 236, 242, 247, 348, 

390, 415, 429. 
George, the prototype of Jonathan 

Oldbuck, 17 n., 272. 
Conversation of Scott, 301, 302, 303, 

421, 422. 

of Edinburgh Society, 301. 

Lines on, 361. 

Corby Castle, 263. 

Cork, the City of, visited, 452. 

Corri, M. Nattali, 539. 

" Count Robert of Paris," 552, 555, 

563, 570, 579 ; publication of, in 1831, 

583, 586. 
Coursing match on Newark Hill, 364. 
Court of Session. See Session. 
Coutts, Mrs., at Ahbotsford, 458. 



Covenanters, the, 157. 

Crabbe, Rev. George, 207. Scott's 
correspondence with, 214. Scott's 
guest during the visit of George IV. 
to Edinburgh, 400, 401, passim; ex- 
tract from his journal, 402. Poetry 
of, read to Scott in his last illness, 
602. Death of, 622. 

Craig, Sir James Gibson, Bart., 559. 

Craighall, seat of the Rattrays, 61. 

Craignethan Castle, 87. 

Crampton, General Sir Philip, 445. 

Cranstoun, George, Esq. (Lord Core- 
house), 426. 

Miss, 67. 

Craven, Hon. Keppel, 590. 

Creditors, Scott's, noble exertions of 
energy on behalf of, 615. 

Croker, Right Hon. John Wilson, re- 
plies to the "Letters of Malachi," 
486. His Tales of English History, 
510. Letter to, with " Tales of a 
Grandfather," ib. Speech on the 
Reform Bill, 586. 

190, 254, 255, 327 n. 

Cross, the, of Edinburgh, 350. 

Cumberland, Duke of (1746), 398. 

Prince George of, 536. 

Cumming, Lady, 37 n. 

Cunningham, Allan, Esq., his reminis- 
cences of Scott in London in 1820, 
358, and in 1821, 383. Patronage of 
his two sons through Scott's influ- 
ence, 537. Monument to Scott at 
Dry burgh, 628. 

533, 598. 

Curie, Mr., at Yetbyre, 13. 

Curran, John Philpot, Esq., 145 n. 

Cuvier, Baron, 622. 



" Daft Days " at Ahbotsford, 372. 
Daisy, Scott's charger, anecdote of, 

265. 
Dalgleish, the butler at Ahbotsford, 

522. 
Dalhousie, Earl of (1832), 628. 
Dalkeith, Earl of, afterwards Charles 

Duke of Buccleuch, 90, 142, 171, 205. 

Harriet, Countess of, 102, 121. 

Palace, residence of King George 

IV. in, 403. 
Dalzell, Mr. Andrew, Professor of 

Greek in Edinburgh College, 27. 
"David of the blood-stained brush," 

262. 
Davidson, James, the original of Dan- 
die Dinmont, 52, 53. 
John, Writer to the Signet, 17 n. 



638 



INDEX. 



Davy, Dr. John, Malta, 588-590. 

Mrs., 589, 590. 

Lady H., 202. 

Sir Humphry, ascends Helvellyn 

with Scott and Wordsworth, 139. 
Visits Ahhotsford, 364, passim. 

Dawson, Captain, 589. 

Dead, remembrance of the, 497. 

Debating Societies, 39. 

Debts of Scott, his delusion regarding, 
592, 593. 

Defoe, Daniel, 169 n. 

D'Haussez, Baron, his account of 
Abbotsford, 553. 

" Demonology and Witchcraft, 
Letters on," publication of, in 
1830, 548. 

"Z)e«" of Scott in Castle Street de- 
scribed, 208, 209. 

Devonshire, Duke of, his Irish do- 
main, 449. 

Dial-stone, inscription, 578 n. 

"Dialogues on Superstition," pro- 
posed publication of, 418. 

Diary of Scott, hint of, from Lord 
Byron's, 464. Extracts from, on bis 
commercial misfortunes,472,prtS5i»(, 
and domestic afflictions, 488, passim, 
499. Miscellaneous, 500. 

Diaries, Scott's remarks on, 613. 

Dibdin, Rev. Dr., letter from, 414. 
Letter to, ib. 

Dickson, Rev. Dr. David, 607. 

Dining, Scott's mode of, 307, 308. 
His Sunday dinners, 309, 370. 

Distance, effects of, 493. 

Domestic servants, Scott's treatment 
of, 354. 

"Don Roderick, The Vision of," 
published in July, 1811, 205. 

Don. Sir Alexander, of Newton, 307, 
322. 

"Doom of Devorgoil, The," pub- 
lished in 1830, 284. 

" Douce Davie," 514. 

Douglas, Archibald Lord, 87. 

David, Lord Reston, 20. 

old church of, 575. Vaults of, 

576. Village of, ib. 

the Lords of, ib. 

" the good Lord James," 576. 

Castle, 576. 

Rev. Dr. Galashiels, 209, 259. 

Mrs., hotel, 600. 

Sir John, of Kelhead, 40 n. 

Doune Castle, 60. 

Downshire, the Marquis of, 76. 

Drocbel Castle, 574. 

Drogheda, town of, 444. 

Drumlanrig Castle, 229. 

Drummond, Henry Home, Esq., 297. 



Dryburgh Abbey, 329, 344, 458, 498, 

607. 

Monument of Scott at, 628. 

' 'Dryden's, John, Life and Works," 

projected edition of, by Scott, 130, 

131 ; publication of, 164. 
John, 201. Irish parody of his 

epigram, 449. 
Dublin visited by Scott. 444. 
Dudley, Earl of, anecdote of, 492, 527. 
Duff, Adam, Esq., 240. 
Dumergue, M. C, 103. 
Duncan, Hon. Henry, 586. 

Rev. Dr., Mertoun, 13. 

Colonel William, 14. 

Dundas, Right Hon. Lord Chief Baron, 

91. 

Robert, Esq., of Arniston, 507. 

Sir Robert, of Beechwood, Bart., 

148. Generous conduct of, in Scott's 

Right Hon. William, 91, 93. 

Dundee, Viscount (Graham), 156, 

278 n., 280, 300. 
Dunottar Castle, 62. 
Durham, Bishop of (Van Mildert), 

entertains the Duke of Wellington 

and Scott in the Castle of Durham, 

521. 



E. 



Edgeworth, Miss, letter to, 222 ; 

visits Abbotsford, 420. Visited by 

Scott at Edgeworthstown, 445, 146. 

Miss Harriet, 448. 

Richard Lovell, Esq., 446. 

Edgeworthstown, 445 ; School of, 416. 
Edinburgh visited by King George IV. 

in 1822, 398, 410. 
" Annual Register," publication of 

the, by Ballantyne, 203, 207, 274, 

287, 298. 
Edinburgh Celtic Society, 378. 

Cross of, 350. 

Review, the. Scott's contributions 

to, 108, 131, 162, 183, 184, 235, 244. 

Royal Society, 377. 

Theatre, riot in. 65. Success of 

the Plav of Rob Roy, 335. Visited 

by King George IV., 406. 
Egerton, Lord Francis, 627. 
Edmonstoune, John James, Esq., of 

Newton, 38, 60. 
Education of children, 178; of the 

heart, 447. 
Eildon Hills, 600. 
Eldon, Lord, 395. 
Elibank. Lord, anecdote of, 487. 
Elland Water, 425. 
Ellenborough, Lord, 537. 



INDEX. 



639 



Ellesmere, Earl of, 627. 

Elliot, Capt. Russell, R. N., 571. 

Cornelius, of Wollee, 12 n. 

Dr. Cleughead, 53, 55. 

of Borth wick-brae, 578. 

W., at Milburnholm, an alleged 

original of Dandie Dinmont, 52. 

Ellis, George, Esq., Letters to, 114, 
115, 120, 131, 184, 185 ; Letter to, on 
Marmion, 157. 

96, passim, 172, 190, 192, 199, 257. 

"Encycl. Britannica," Scott's contri- 
butions to, 419, 505. 

Energy, Scott's noble exertions of, 
615. 

Erskine, William, Lord Kinnedder, 
his alleged paternity of the " Bridal 
of Triermain," 218, 224. Quarterly 
Review of "Old Mortality," 278, 
278 n. Visit to Abbotsford, 386. 
Sketch of, 387. Promoted to the 
Bench, 389. Illness and death, 408. 

57, 58, 81, 121, 133, 237, 240, 241. 

Esk River, lines on the scenery of, 80. 

" Essay on Chivalry," by Scott, 
418, 505. 

the Drama," 418. 

— - — Romance," ib. 

the Planting op Waste 

Lands," 515. 

Landscape Gardening," 426, 

527. 

" Eve of St. John," the ballad of , 86. 

Euthanasia, 585, 601. 

Exchequer Bench, Scott's view towards 
the, 282. 



" Fair Maid of Perth, The," 527. 
publication of, in April, 1828, 534. 

Family Bible of Scott, extracts from. 
See Bible. 

" Family Legend, The," Miss Baillie's 
play of, 195. 

" Faust," poem of, by Goethe, 325. 

Fees, record of, 112. 

Female beauty, 538. 

Fergusson, Dr. Adam, 45, 75, 118, 288. 

Sir Adam, letters to Scott from 

Lisbon, 206, 207. Becomes resident 
at Huntley Burn, 288. At Abbots- 
ford, 321. At Lisbon, 341. Letter 
to, ib. Visits Blair- Adam with Scott, 
375. His marriage, 379. Receives 
the honour of knighthood, 409. 

38, 61, 75, 332, 369, passim, 430, 

506, 631. 

Captain John, 75, 322, 325, 331. 

■ Misses, Huntley Burn, 352. Sketch 

of, 380, 554. 



Ferrier, Miss, invited to Abbotsford 

during Scott's illness, 569. 
Festivals, annual, 503. 
" Field of Waterloo, THE,"apoem, 

publication of, 266. 
Fielding, 582. 
Fife, Earl of, 507. 

woman, misfortunes of a, 450. 

" Fire King, The," ballad of, 87. 

First love, 222. 

Fish-women, 509. 

Flodden Field, 219. 

Florence, M., the Duke of Buccleuch's 

cook, 323. 
Foley, Admiral Sir Thomas, 587. 
Forbes, Sir William, of Pitsligo, Bart., 

49. Generous conduct of, in Scott's 

affairs, 481, 525. Death of, 539. 

George, Esq., 558. 

Forebodings, melancholy, of Scott on 

impending ruin, 472, passim. 
"Foreign Quarterly Review," Scott's 

contributions to, 505, 530. 
Fortitude of Scott, remarks on the, 

616. 
Fortune, Mr., his mechanism, 563. 
" Fortunes of Nigel, The," 3 vols., 

392 ; publication of, in 1822, 396. 
Fox, Right Hon. C. J., 125, 141, 143, 

145 n., 603. 
France and Britain contrasted, 565. 
Frankfort visited by Scott, 596. 
Fraser, Mr. Luke, High School, Edin- 
burgh, 18. 
Freeling, Sir Thomas, 327. 
French invasion, alarm of, 140. 

Rev. James, 19. 

snuff-box, 265. 

Frenchman, " a funny," 413. 

Frere, Right Hon. John Hookham, 

589. 
" Friday Club," the, 193. 
Friendship of Scott, remarks on the, 

618. 
Fuller, Jack, 359. 
Funerals, Scott's dislike of, 493. 
Futurity, speculations on, 496, 497. 



G. 



Gas light at Abbotsford, 417. 

Gattonside, 379. 

Geddes, Mr. A., his portrait of Scott, 

630. 
Gell, Sir William, his memoranda of 

Scott at Naples, 591 ; at Rome, 594. 
Genius, distinction of, in youth and in 

age, 542 ; of Scott, estimate of the, 

620. 
George III., King, 200. 



640 



INDEX. 



George IV. Introduction of Lord 
Byron to, 212. His opinion of Scott's 
poetry, ib. ; entertains Scott at Carl- 
ton House, 254; confers a baronetcy 
on Scott, 333. Proclamation at Edin- 
burgh of his accession, 350. Corona- 
tion of, 381. Visit toEdinburgh, 1822, 
398, 409. Gift to Scott of " Mont- 
faucon's Antiquities," 434. Com- 
mands Scott to Windsor, 500. Scott's 
estimate of, 501. Death of, 549. 

" German Ballads," translated and 
published by Scott, 67, 70, 82. 

Gibson, John, Esq., W.S.,481,482, 524. 

Gifford, Lord and Ladv, 455, 584. 

William, Esq., 186, 395. 

Gilbert, Mr. Graham, his portrait of 
Scott, 631. 

Gillies, Mr. R. P., 100, 505, 530. 

Gilsland, Visit of Scott to, 139. 

Glammis Castle visited, 62. 

Glasgow bailie, anecdote of a, 443. 

Statue of Scott in, 628. 

" Glenfinlas," ballad of, 86, 97. 

Glengarry, M'Donnell of, 403. 

Goderich, Lord, 521. 

Godscroft's "History of the House of 
Douglas," 609. 

Goethe, his tragedy of "Goetz " trans- 
lated and published by Scott, 82. 
His poem of " Faust," 325. View of 
Scott's "Life of Buonaparte," 512. 
Death of, 622. 

297, 593, 595. 

" Goetz von Berlichingen," trans- 
lated and published by Scott, 82. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 446, 466. 

Goodfellow, "William, a tailor, 433. 
Death of, 433. 

Gordon, Mr. George Huntly, account 
of him as amanuensis to Scott, 530 ; 
publishes "Two Sermons," the gift 
of Scott, for L.250, 532, 533. 

Duke of, 531. 

Duchess of, 344. 

John Watson, Esq., his portrait 

of Scott, 681. 

Major Pryse, Scott's cicerone at 

Waterloo, 530. 

Gourgaud, General, his conduct re- 
garding Buonaparte, 519. Antici- 
pated challenge from, 519, 520; and 
results, 520. 

Gower, Lord and Lady Francis, 535. 

Graham of Claverhouse. See Viscount 
Dundee. 

Sir James, 579, 587. 

Island, Letter from Scott on, 588. 

Lord William, 572. 

Grant, Francis, R.A., his portrait of 
Scott, 631. 



Grant, Mrs., of Laggan, 160. 

Greenshields, Mr. John, his statue of 
Sir Walter, 540, 577, 632. 

" Grey Brother," the ballad of, 86. 

Mare's Tail, 137. 

Grierson, Mr. Thomas, 32 n. 

Grieve, Mr. John, 269. 

Griffith, Mr. Ealing, 554 n. 

Gustavus, Prince of Sweden k visits 
Scott in Castle Street, 350; and at 
Abbotsford, ib. 

" Guy Mannering," 3 vols., 247 ; pub- 
lication of, 247, 251; dramatised by 
Terry, 271. 



H. 



Haddow, Mr. Douglas, 575. 

Halford, Sir Henry, 584, 597. 

' ' Haliburtons , Memorials of the , " 
5, 609. 

"Halidon Hill," a drama, publica- 
tion of, in 1822, 396, 420. 

Hall, Capt. Basil, R.N., visits Abbots- 
ford, 435 ; extracts from his diary, 
ib., 437. Successful application at 
the Admiralty on behalf of Scott, 
579 ; at Portsmouth with Scott, 587. 

Sir James, of Duuglass, 377. 

Hallam, Henry, Esq., 164; visits Ab- 
botsford, 545. 

Hamilton, Lord Archibald, 169. 

Lady Anne, 97. 

Duke of, 97. 

Palace, 97. 

Robert, Esq., 240. 

Hardyknute, ballad of, 13. 

"Harold the Dauntless," 274; 
publication of, 280. 

"Harvest Home " at Abbotsford, 371. 

Hawick, town of, 572. 

weavers, 570, 571. 

Hay, Mr. D. R., painter, 433. 

Haydon, B. R., Esq., sketch of, 535. 
Portrait of Scott, ib. Death of, 536 n. 

Hayman, Mrs., Blackheath, 144, 152. 

"Heart of Midlothian, The," 
publication of, in 1818, 316. 

Heath, Mr. Charles, engraver, his 
literary offers to Scott, 533. 

Heber, Reginald, Bishop of Calcutta, 
104. 

Richard, Esq., 91, 104 ; meets Scott 

in London, 358. 

Helvellyn, ascent of, 139 v 

Hermitage Castle, 51, 98,'581. 

Hertford, Marquis of, 590. I • 

Highland clans, muster of, in 1822, 
399, 403, 406. 

Garb assumed by King George 

IV., 405 ; and Sir William Curtis, ib. 



INDEX. 



641 



Highlands of Scotland, Scott's excur- 
sion to, 34 n., 60. 

"Highland Widow, The," tale of, 
published in November, 1827, 523. 

"History of Scotland" for Lard- 
ner's Cyclopaedia, publication of 
vol. i., in 1829, and vol. ii., in 1830, 
548. 

Hogg, James, the Ettrick Shepherd, at 
dinner with Scott, 112. Sketch of, 
171. Song on the banner of Buc- 
cleuch, 268. Anecdote of, at Bow- 
hill, 268. Quarrel with Scott, ib., 
and letter to, 269. His marriage, 
381 ; invited to witness the corona- 
tion of King George IV., and de- 
clines, ib., 383; president of the St. 
Ron an 's games, 430. Accommoda- 
tion of money by Scott, 593 ; visits 
London, ib. 

95, 115 n., 117, 133, 211, 370. Death 

of, 622. 

Mr. Robert, letter from, on Scott's 

composition of " The Life of Buona- 
parte," 510. 

Hogarth, George, Esq., W.S., 310. 

Hogmanay at Abbotsford, 372. 

Holland, Dr. Henry, 585, 597. 

Lord, 193, 194. 

Holy rood Palace, King George IV. in, 
399, 404. 

Home, George, Esq., of Wedderburn, 
resigns his clerkship of Session in 
favour of Scott, 141. 

John, author of "Douglas," 15, 45, 

60. Reviewal of his life and works, 
505. 

Lord, 267. 

Homer, busts of, 298. 

Hope, James Robert, Esq., married to 
Miss Lockhart, 625. 

James, Esq., 20. 

Sir John, of Pinkie, 507. 

Horner, Francis, Esq., 163. 

Horsemanship, 179. 

Horton, Right Hon. Sir Robert Wilmot, 
500. 

" House of Aspen, The," translated 
by Scott in 1799, and published in 
1829, 84, 533. 

Howgate Inn, 35. 

Howley, Dr., Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 190. 

Human life, a dream, 504. 

frail tenure of, 504. 

Hume, David, the historian, " Poetical 
Works " of , 263. 

David, Esq., Professor of Scots 

Law, afterwards Baron of Ex- 
chequer, 41, 66, 148, 238. 

Joseph, Esq., advocate, 306. 

2t 



Hunter, Alex. Gibson, Esq., of Black- 
ness, 180, 186, 226. 

Huntley Burn becomes the residence 
of the Fergussons, 288. 

352, 490, 554. 

Hurst, Robinson & Co., London, 462, 
470, 472, 478, 479. 

Huxley, Lieut.-Col., 9 n. 

Hymns, Roman Catholic, 604. 



Ideas, Young, 447. 

Illustrious men, the children of, 625. 

Imagination, the, of Scott, 610. 

victims of, 504. 

Imitations of Scott, literary, 620, 621. 

Influence and zeal of Scott in society, 
416. 

Inglis, Sir Robert, 584. 

Innerleithen, 429. 

Invasion, French, alarm of, 140. 

Ireland, visited by Scott, 444, passim ; 
aspect of the south of, 448, 449. 

Irish whisky, " Kings and Queens," 
451. 

widow, a card from one, 450. 

Irongray Churchyard, monument to 
Helen Walker, 586. 

Irving, Alex., Lord Newton, 41. 

John, Esq., 30, 35. 

Washington, Esq., visits Abbots- 
ford, 265, 288. Extracts from his 
journal, 289. 

" Ivanhoe," 3 vols., 336, 346. Publi- 
cation of, in December, 1819, 347^ 



Jacobitism of Scott, 611. 

James, G. P. R., Esq., 580. 

James VI., King, 308. 

Jamieson, Captain John, of the "James 
Watt," 600. 

Mr. Robert, his collection of pop- 
ular ballads, 133. 

Jedburgh, town of, 572 ; assizes at, 63. 
Speech of Scott against reform at, 
564, 565; and at the Roxburghshire 
election, 570. Scott insulted at, 565, 
570, 604. 

"Jeddartfee," 63. 

Jeffrey, Francis, now Lord, his first 
acquaintance with Scott, 39 n., 108. 
His reviewal of the " Lay of the Last 
Minstrel," 124; "Marmion," 159, 
161. Sketch of him, 162, 163. Re- 
viewal of " Scott's Life of Swift," 
236; and of " Waverley," 244. 



642 



INDEX. 



Jeffrey, 126, 146, 162, 194, 199, 223, 238, 

415, 506, 605. 
Jews, state of, in Germany, 348. 
Job, book of, 326. 
Jobson, Miss, of Lochore, visits Ab- 

botsford, 437; married to Scott's 

eldest son, 438. 
"John of SJci/e," the piper, 378, 379. 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, his "Vanity of 

Human Wishes," 201. Penance of, 

534. 

490, 578 n. 

Jollie, James, Esq., W.S., 481. 
Joseph, Mr., his bust of Scott, 632. 
Journalising, remarks on, 300. 
" Judging our Neighbour," 608. 



Keble's "Christian Year," lines 
from, 608. 

"Keepsake, The," editorship of, of- 
fered to Scott, 533. His contribu- 
tions to, ib. 

Keith, Mrs. Murray, portrayed in 
" Chronicles of the Canongate," 524. 

Mrs., of Ravelston, anecdote of, 

390. 

William, Esq., 607. 

Kelso, Scott's schoolboy days at, 23. 

376. 

Kemble, John Philip, Esq., Scott's in- 
timacy with, 194, 196. His retire- 
ment from the Edinburgh stage, 284, 
313. 

"Kenilworth," 3 vols., 376; pub- 
lication of, in 1820, 378. 

Kerr, Charles, Esq., of Abbotrule, 88. 

Kent, Duchess of, commands Scott to 
dine with her, 536. 

Kinnedder, Lord. See William Er- 
skine. 

"Kirn " at Abbotsford, 371. • 

Knight, Mr., his portrait of Scott, 630. 

Knighton, Sir William, 549. 

Kyle, Dr., Bishop of Cork, 444. 



"Lady of the Lake, The," 191; 
publication of, in May, 1810, 198; 
" Lady of the Lake " compared with 
"The Lay" and "Marmion," 199. 

Laidlaw, Mr. William, 53, 95, passim. 
Character of, and removal to Kae- 
side, 284, 285. Letter to, ib. Irving's 
account of, 292 ; amanuensis to Scott, 
336, 568. Suggestions for " St. Ro- 
man's Well," 420. Funeral of the 
child of, 493. Removal from Kae- 



side, 523; and restored, 550. His 
interviews with Scott in last illness, 
601, passim. Death of, 622. 

Laidlaw, 346. 367, 554, 557. 

(Laird Nippy), 175, 371. 

Laidlaws, the superstitious story re- 
garding, 176, 177. 

Laing, Mr. David, 415. 

Malcolm, Esq., 66. 

"Laird's Jock, The," tale of, 527. 

Landlords, resident, 373, 446. 

Landor, Walter Savage, Esq., 145 n., 
303. 

" Landscape Gardening, Essay 
on," 426. 

Landseer, Edwin, R.A., his portrait of 
Scott, 631. 

Lasswade Cottage, Scott's residence at, 

80, passim, 100. Morritt's reminis- 
cences of Scott at, 173. 

Lauderdale, Earl of, 193. 

Laughter, of Scott, 423. 

Laval-Montmorency, Duke of, 553. 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, his portrait of 
Scott, 356, 630. 

" Lay of the Last Minstrel," 102, 
120. Publication of, in 1805, 121- 
125, 161; contrasted with "Mar- 
mion" and the " Lady of the Lake," 
221. 

" Legend of Montrose," 336. Pub- 
lication of, in 1818, 342, 345. 

Leopold, Prince, 536. 

Leslie, C. R., R.A., his portrait of 
Scott, 630. 

' ' Letters of Malachi Malagrow- 
ther," origin of their composition, 
and publication of, in March, 1826, 
486, 487, 618. Fourth Letter of, 
written and suppressed, 558, 561. 

"Letters on Demonology and 
Witchcraft," publication of, in 
1830, 548. 

Lewis, M. G., author of " The Monk," 

81. His " Tales of Wonder," ib. 
85, 86, 89, 98. 

Leyden, Dr. John, 91, passim, 103. 

Letter from, 181. 
Liddell, the Hon. Henry, letter from, 

522. 

Dr., 588, 589. 

Liddesdale, Scott's first excursion to, 

51. 
Life. See Human. 
Lilliesleaf , anecdote of a minister of, 

340. 
Literary composition, Scott's facility 

in, 510. 
Literary imitations of Scott, 620, 621. 
Loch, John, Esq., 537. 
Corriskin, 241. 



INDEX. 



643 



Loch Katrine, 199. 

of the Lowes, 138. 

St. Mary's, 138. 

Skene, 137. 

Vennachar, 60. 

Lochleven Castle, 374. 

Lockhart, John Gibson, Esq., his first 
meeting with Scott, in 1818, 297. 
First Visit to Abbotsford, 1818, 320. 
Visit during Scott's illness, 336. 
Sunday at Abbotsford, 350. Mar- 
riage with Miss Scott, 359. Autumn 
at Abbotsford, 360. Visit to Walton 
Hall, 376. Residence at Chiefswood 
Cottage, 385. Excursion with Scott 
to Clydesdale, 426 ; and to Ireland, 
443. Communications with Scott 
on the commercial alarms of 1825, 
462. Removal to London, 473. In- 
terview with Constable there, 477. 
Residence at Portobello, and visits 
of Scott, 514. Scott's residence with, 
in London, 1828, 535. Remonstrance 
with Scott in illness, 558. Visits Ab- 
botsford during Scott's illness, 1831, 
568. Excursion with Scott to Doug- 
lasdale, 573. Accompanies him on 
his departure from Abbotsford, 1831, 
583 ; and in last illness, from London 
to Abbotsford, 600, passim. 

572, 600, 606. 

Mrs., her marriage, 359. Autumn 

at Abbotsford, 360. Residence at 
Chiefswood Cottage, 385 ; at Porto- 
bello, 514. Return to Chiefswood, 
568; to Abbotsford during Scott's 
illness, 1813, 568. Accompanies him 
to Portsmouth, 587. Attends on him 
in his last illness, 600, 603, passim. 
Her death, 623. 

424, 489, 537, 562, 561, 597, 600. 

John Hugh (the Hugh Little John 

of the "Tales of a Grandfather,") 
510, 514. Illness of, 488, 489; and 
death, 593, 623. 

Walter Scott, grandson of Scott, 

497. 

Miss Charlotte Harriet Jane, 

grand-daughter of Scott, now Mrs. 
Hope, 625. 

Miss Violet, 548. 

William, Esq., of Milton-Lock- 

hart, Scott's visit to, 577. 

William Elliott, Esq., of Borth- 

wickbrae, 564. 

London, Scott a lion in, 189. Society 
of, 190, 507. 

Longman & Co., Messrs., London, 99, 
102, 105, 125, 150, 248, :>75, 629. 

Longtown, fete at the village of, 230. 

Lonsdale, Earl and Countess of, 453. 



" Lord of the Isles, The," 228, 232, 
240, 246, 247, passim. Publication 
of, 242. 

Lothian, Marquis of, 598. 

Love, a first, often repulsed, 69. 

Lushington, Hon. S. R. 531. 

Lysons, Professor, 414. 



M. 



M'Crie, Rev. Dr., his defence of the 

Covenanters, 278. 
M'Culloch, Miss Elizabeth, afterwards 

Mrs. Thomas Scott, 9 n. 
M'Diarmid, Mr. and Mrs., Dumfries, 

582. 
Macdonald, Andrew, author of "Vi- 

monda," 58. 
Mr. Lawrence, his bust of Scott, 

632. 

Marshal, 500. 

Macdougal, Sir George, 12. 

Sir Henry Hay, of Makerstone, 

12, 322. 

Isobel, 12 n. 

Ronald, Esq., of Staffa, 202. 

"Macduff's Cross," a dramatic 

sketch, 375, 420. 
Macfait, Dr., 29. 
Mackay, Mr. Charles, his admirable 

personification of Bailie Jarvie, 335, 

509. 

Rev. Dr., visits Abbotsford, 569. 

Mackenzie, Colin, Esq., of Portmore, 

149; generous conduct in Scott's 

affairs, 525. 

Henry, Esq., 80, 364, passim. 

Mackintosh, Sir James, 103; meeting 

with Scott, 586 ; death of, 622. 
M'Nab, the Laird of, 506. 
M'Naught, minister of Girthon, case 

of, 58. 
M'Neill, Sir John, 623, 624. 
Macclesfield, 501. 
Magee, Dr., Archbishop of Dublin, 

444. 
Maida in Scott's den, 299. 
Maitland Club, 415. 
Malachi Malagrowther. See Letters 

of. 
Malahide Castle, 444. 
Malcolm, Sir John, presents Scott to 

the Duke of Wellington, 260, 626. 
Malta, Scott's arrivalat, 589. 
Mansfield, Lord, 88. 
"Marmion," 150. Progress of, its 

composition, 151, passim, 156. 

Publication of, 155. Correspond- 
ence with Lord Byron regarding, 

212, 213. Contrasted with "The 



644 



INDEX. 



Lay" and "Lady of the Lake," ib. 

Letters from Southey and Ellis on, 

157, 158. Revival by Jeffrey, 159. 
Marriage, proposals of, to Scott, 499, 

550. 
Mary, Queen, of Scotland, 374. 
Matliieson, Peter, Scott's coachman, 

322. His evening psalm, ib. 

343, 402, 522, 571. 

Matthews, Mr. Charles, comedian, 181, 

196, 197 n., 262, 287, 313, 476. 
Matthias, T. J., Esq., 590. 
Maturin, Eev. C. R., 162, 232. 
Meaclowbank, Lord, visits Abbotsford, 

507. Speech of, at the Theatrical 

Fund dinner, 508. 
Meath, Lord and Lady, 536. 
Meigle, Scott's visit to, 61. 
Melancholy musings of Scott on im- 

pendingruin, 472, passim. 
Melrose Abbey, 210, 329. 

battle of, 208. 

" Melvill's, Sir James, Memoirs," new 

edition of, 506. 
Melville, Viscount (Henry Dundas), 

90, 141, 142. Impeachment of, 145. 
second Viscount (Robert Dundas) , 

91. View towards India, 204; at 
Abbotsford, 321, 537. 

" Memorie of the Somervilles," 
2 vols., 246, 609. 

Memory, Scott's power of, 426. 

Men " born with prose in their souls," 
512. 

Menzies, Hon. William, 239. 

Mertoun-house, 155. 

Metaphorical illustrations, 512. 

Millar, Miss, governess to Scott's chil- 
dren, 179. 

Miller, Mr. William, London, 151, 164. 

Milne, Mr. Nicol, 545. 

Milton-Lockhart visited by Scott, 577. 

" Minstrelsy of the Scottish Bor- 
der," 94, 98, 99 ; publication of, 104- 
107. 

Misanthropy, 490. 

Mitchell, Rev. James, 20. 

Moira, Earl of, 130. 

" Molly and the Kettle," 558. 

"Monastery, The," 3 vols., 351; 
publication of, in 1820, 356. 

Monastic establishments, 368. 

Moore, Judge, visit to his seat at 
Lamberton, 448. 

Thomas, Esq., his "Two-penny 

Post-bag," 223; Scott's Letter to, on 
Lord Byron, 252 ; visits Abbotsford, 
455. Scott's sketch of him, 456. 

Sir John, 205. 

Mons Meg restored to the Castle of 
Edinburgh, 410. 



Montagu-house, 144. 

Montagu, Lord, 90, 630. 

Montrose, Marquis of, at Philiphaugh, 
338, 339, 345. Sword of, 404. 

Duke of, 404. 

Monypenny, Alex., Esq., W.S., 481. 

Morality of Scott's writings, remarks 
on the, 619, 620. 

"Moriturus vos Saluto," 566. 

Morritt, John B. S., Esq., reminis- 
cences of Scott at Lasswade, 173; 
and as a Lion in Londou, 189. Vis- 
ited by Scott at Rokeby , 191 . Letter 
from, 218. Scott's visit to, 219. Let- 
ter to, 221. Character of, 538. Last 
parting with Scott, 584. Death of, 
623. 

Letters to, 221, 237, 263, 283, 333, 

371, 539. 

Mottoes, 273. 

Mountain scenery, 290. 

" Montfaucon's Antiquities," gift of 
George IV. to Scott, 434. 

Murray, Mr. John, London, purchases a 
share of "Marmion," 151; publisher 
of "Tales of my Landlord," first 
series, 276. Letter to Scott on, 277. 
Scott's letter to, ib. Scott's letter 
to, on Lord Byron's "Cain," 395. 
Generous surrender of his copy- 
right share of "Marmion," 543, 
544. 

170, 183, 189, 213, 226, 464. 

John, of Broughton, secretary to 

Prince Charles Stuart, 40 n. 

Lord, 506. 

Patrick, Esq., of Simprim, 61. 

Sir P. of Ochtertyre, 298. 

the Regent, 265 n. 

Mr. W. H., of the Edinburgh 

Theatre, 335, 507. 

Muschat's Cairn, 408. 

Music, at Abbotsford, 370, 424. 

Scott's incapacity for, 36, 37. 

" My Aunt Margaret's Mirror," 
tale of, 527 ; first published in " The 
Keepsake," 533. 

Mystery of Scott, remarks on the, 615. 



N. 



" Nameless Glen," proposed poem of 

the, 228. 
Napier, Macvey, Esq., 505. 
Naples, Scott's residence at, 590. 
Nelson, Lord, 547. 
Newark, Castle of, 122, 338, 366. 

Hill, coursing match on, 364. 

Newton, Gilbert Stewart, R.A., his 

portrait of Scott, 630. 



INDEX. 



645 



Nicol, Rev. Principal, St. Andrews, 
298. 

W., of the High School, Edin- 
burgh, 22. 

Nicholson, Miss Jane, 76. 

Dr. Dean of Exeter, ib. 

William, Bishop of Exeter, 77. 

Nicolson, John, Abbotsford, 554, 563, 
597. 

Nimeguen, Scott's fatal attack at, 597. 

"Noble Moringer, The," ballad 
of, composed under severe illness, 
337. 

Northampton, Marchioness of, at Ab- 
botsford with Mrs. Coutts, 458. 

Northern Lighthouses, Commissioners 
of, 240. 



O. 



Oil Gas Company, the, Scott presi- 
dent of, 417. . 

O'Kelly, an Irish rhymer, 449. 

"Old Mortality," publication of, 
276. Reviewal of, 278, 278 n. Opin- 
ions of, 279. Suggestions of Mr. 
Train regarding, 280. 

" Opus Magnum," 581, passim. 

Orange, the Prince of (1815), 261. 

Orkney and Shetland, Scott's voyage 
to, 240. 

Orleans, Duke of (1815), 261. 

Ormiston, " Auld Sandie," 11 n. 

Captain, 370. 

Ossian, 25. 

Oxford, 360. 



Painting, Scott's incapacity for, 36. 

Paris, success of " Quentin Durward " 
in, 418. 

Park, Mungo, anecdotes of, 117, 118. 

Mr. Archibald, 118. 

Parliamentary Reform Bill, the, 556. 
Scott's opposition to, 560, 564. Riots 
in London, 584. Duties of Sheriffs, 
605. 

Paterson, Peter, "the living Old Mor- 
tality," 62. 

" Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk," 
2o9. Publication of, 270. 

Peel, Right Hon. Sir Robert, accom- 
panies King George IV. to Edin- 
burgh, 404. His letters to Scott, 
409,541. 

605, 626. 

Peerages, restoration of the forfeited, 
410. 

Pennycuick House, 35. 

Percy, Rev. Dr., Bishop of Dromore, 



96. His " Reliques of Ancient Po- 
etry," 26, 106. 
Percy Anecdotes, misstatement in, 

20 n. 
" Peveril of the Peak," 4 vols., 

397. Publication of, in 1823, 411. 
"Peveril,"* anecdote of, "Pete?' o' the 

painch," 412. 
Philiphaugh, battle-field of, visited, 

333, 404. 
Phillips, Thomas, R.A., his portrait of 

Scott, 629. 
Philpotts, Dr., Bishop of Exeter, 455, 

626. Letter from, 521. 
"Phoebe Dawson," Crabbe's poem of, 

602. 
"Picaroon," 229. 
Pig at Abbotsford, 365. 
Pigot, Sir Hugh, commander of the 

Barham frigate, 586-588. 
Pindar, Peter, lines of, 197. 
" Pirate, The," 3 vols., 240, 386, 387, 

392. Publication of, in 1821, 394. 
Pitcairn's, Robert, Esq., "Ancient 

Criminal Trials," 415, 547. 
Pitt, Right Hon. William, 125, 140, 232. 
Platoff , the Hetman, meeting of Scott 

with, 260 n. ' 
Plnmmer, Andrew, of Middlestead, 90. 
"Poacher, The," an imitation of 

Crabbe, 207. 
Poet-Laureate, office of, offered to 

Scott, and declined, 231. 
Poetry, Scott's estimate of his own, 

200, 201. 
Poets, contrast of, with Scott, 407. 
Poole, Mr. J. F., his offer of money to 

Scott, 481. 
Polier, Baron, 350. 
Political creed of Scott, remarks on 

the, 618. 
Pompeii, Scott's visit to, 591. 
Poor, treatment of the, 435, 436. 
Pope, 235, 259, 447, 459. 
Popish Plot, the, 411. 
Portsmouth, Scott's residence at, 587. 
Pragmatic Sanction, the, 17 n. 
Prestonpans, Scott's residence at, in 

1779, 16. Revisited, 34. 
Pringle, A., of Whytbank, 258, 262. 
James, Esq., of Torwoodlee, 140. 

Visit to, 332. 
Prior, lines of, 574, 575. 
"Private Letters " of the 17th century, 

projected publication of, 391. 
Privy Counsellor, rank of, offered to 

Scott, and declined, 549. 

" A Sage," letter from, 499. 

Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, 

450. 
Purdie, Charles, 364, 368. 



646 



INDEX. 



Purdie, Thomas, promoted into the 
service of Scott, 117. Description 
of, 351, 352. Anecdotes of, 296, 322, 
325, 352, 353, 354, 354 n., 432, 435, 
49C. His death and epitaph, 545, 546. 



Q. 



Quaighs, Highland, 309, 370. 

"Quarterly Review," the, projected, 
184. Review of the Waverley Novels, 
by Mr. Senior, 395. Scott's contri- 
butions to, 505, 527, 539. 

" Queenhoo Hall," published by 
Scott, 169. 

"QUENTIN DURWARD," 3 Vols., 411, 

413 ; publication of, in 1823, 417. 



R. 



Raeburns, family progenitors of the, 
526. 

Sir Henry, 409. His portrait of 

Scott, 173, 409, 629, 630. 

Ramsay, Rev. E. B., 497, 498. 

John, Esq., Ochtertyre, 61, 71, 272. 

Rank, Scott's estimate of, 460. 

Ravensworth, Lord and Lady, 521. 

" Redgauntlet," 3 vols., publication 
of, in 1824, 431. 

Reform Bill, see Parliamentary. 

Regalia of Scotland, the discovery 
of, 295. 

Religion of Scott, remarks on the, 619. 

" Religious Discourses by a Lay- 
man," singular account of the com- 
position, 530, and publication, 532. 

"Reliquiae Trottcosiensis," proposed 
publication of, 552. 

Residence of landlords, 373. 

Rhine, the river, 597. 

Rhymer's Glen, 288, 421. 

Rice, Spring, Esq., 536. 

Richardson, John, Esq., London, anec- 
dote of his angling, 354 n., 598. 

Samuel, 466. 

Riddell House, 340. 

Riddell, John, Esq., 329. 

Sir John, of Riddell, 338; family 

of, 340, 469. 

Ritchie, Mr. Alex. Musselburgh, 628. 

David, original of "The Black 

Dwarf," 75. 

Ritson, Mr. Joseph, 96, passim, 101. 

Robertson, Peter Lord, anecdote of 
Peveril, 412, 430. 

" Rob Roy," the title of, suggested by 
Constable, 286. Published in De- 
cember, 1817, 293. 

the drama of, performed in the 



Edinburgh theatre, 335. "Witnessed 

by King George IV., 406. 
Rob Roy, Cave of, 60, 287. 
Rogers, Samuel, Esq., 103, 352. Lines 

of, 537. 
"Rokeby," 218, 220. Publication of, 

221. 
Rokeby Park, Scott's visit to, 191, 219. 
Rome, Scott's residence at, 594. 
Roman Catholic hymns, 604. 
Rose, William Stewart, Esq., 103, 153, 

172, 364. 
Rosebank, seat of, bequeathed to Scott, 

116. 
Roseberv, Earl of, 628. 
Ross, Dr. Adolphus, 558, 563, 604. 

Mrs., 604. 

Priory, 148. 

Roundheads, the, 222. 
Roxburgh, John Duke of, 99. 

Club, the, 414. 

Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scott 

President of, 377, 416. 
Russell, Lieut.-Gen. Sir James, 607. 

Lord John, 598. 

Rutherford, Andrew, Esq., 506. 

Anne, married to Walter Scott, 

the father of the Poet, 7. See Mrs. 

Scott. 
Miss Christian, aunt of Sir Walter 

Scott, 45, 259. Death of, 346. 
Dr. Daniel, uncle of Sir Walter 

Scott, 7, 45. Death of, 346. 
Miss Janet, aunt of Sir Walter 

Scott, 7. 
Dr. John, grandfather of Sir 

Walter Scott, 7, 347. 

Robert, Esq., W.S., 607. 

Ruthven, Lady, 631. 



S. 



Sabbath-Day, Scott's observance of 

the, 178. 
"Saddler, Sir Ralph, State Pa- 
pers," 3 vols., 4to, 168; publication 

of, 197. 
St. Albans, the Duke of, visits Ab- 

botsford with Mrs. Coutts, 457. 
St. Anthony's Chapel, 403. 
St. Kevin's Bed, excursion to, 445. 
"St. Ronan's Well," 3 vols., 420; 

publication of, in 1823, 428. 
St. Ronan's Border Games, 430. 
Salmon Fishing, 354 n., 364. Festival 

of, 368. "Burning the Water," 135, 

369. 
Sandy-Knowe, Scott's residence at, 10, 

11 n. 
Saunders and Ottley, Messrs., 533. 



INDEX. 



647 



Saxon, Mr., his portrait of Scott, 629. 

Scott, Sir Walter, Bart, of Abbots- 
ford — his Autobiography, 1-43. 
His Ancestry, 1, 2. Parentage, 5, 
6. 

1771-1792. —Born 15th August, 1771, 9. 
Anecdotes of his infancy, 10, 11. 
Sent in his fourth year to Bath, 14. 
Returns to Sandy-Knowe, 16. Resi- 
dence at Prestonpans, ib.; at George 
Square, 17. Sent to the High School 
of Edinburgh, 18 ; to Kelso, 23. Re- 
moved to the College of Edinburgh, 
27. Apprenticed to his father as 
Writer to the Signet, 1785, 29. Meets 
Robert Burns, 31 n. First excursion 
to the Highlands, 34 n. Literary 
Societies, 37. Early companions, 38. 
His law studies and call to the Bar, 
July, 1792, 40-43. Study of Lan- 
guages, 45, 46. 

1792-1797. — First love, 47. His per- 
sonal appearance, 48. Excursions 
to Northumberland, 50; to Liddes- 
dale, 51 ; to the Highlands, 60. Jed- 
burgh assizes, 63. Plan of the Vol- 
unteer Cavalry started, 64. Publishes 
Ballads after Burger, 67, 69. Disap- 
pointed in love, 69. Organisation 
of the Volunteer Cavalry, 73. 

1797-1803.— Tour to the English Lakes, 
1797, 75. Meets Miss Carpenter at 
Gilsland, and married to, 78. Early 
married life (1797-1798) at Edinburgh, 
79; and Lasswade Cottage, 80. Meets 
with Monk Lewis, 81. Publishes 
" Goetz of Berlichingen " in 1799, 83. 
Visits London, ib. Death of his fa- 
ther, 84. First publication of origi- 
nal ' ' Ballads, ' ' 86. Origin of his con- 
nexion with the Ballantyne press, 
89. Appointed Sheriff of Selkirk- 
shire, 90. His "Border Minstrelsy," 
94, 98, 104. "Sir Tristrem," 98. 
Visits London, 102 ; and Oxford, 104. 
Publishes " Sir Tristrem," 113. 

1804-1806. — Contributions to the Edin- 
burgh Review, 108, 131. Visited by 
Wordsworth, 109. Removal to Ash- 
esteil, 116. Publication of "The 
Lay of the Last Minstrel , " 121 . Part- 
nership with James Ballantyne, 126. 
His position in society at this period, 
127. Literary projects, 129-131. 
Visits Wordsworth and the Lakes, 
139 ; Gilsland, 139. Appointed Clerk 
of Session and visits London, 141- 
149. 

1806-1809. — Commencement of "Mar- 
mion," 150. Appointed Secretary to 
the Commission on Scotch Jurispru- 



dence, 155. Publication of " Mar- 
mion," 155, passim, 163; of "The 
Life and Works of Dry den," 164; 
and various other Works, 168. Visit 
of Mr. Morritt, and his account 
of Scott's Domestic Life, 172, 173. 
Rupture with Constable & Co., 180, 
passim, 187. Organisation of the 
"Quarterly Review," 184. Partner- 
ship with John Ballantyne, 180, 187. 

1809-1812 . — Visit to London , 180 . The- 
atrical Anecdotes, 194, 195. Publi- 
cation of "The Lady of the Lake," 
198. Excursion to the Hebrides, 202. 
Publication of "The Vision of Don 
Roderick," 205. Purchase of Ab- 
botsford, 209-215. Correspondence 
with Lord Byron, 212. Departure 
from Ashestiel, 214. 

1812-1814.— Visit to Rokeby Park, 219. 
Publication of "Rokeby," 220, and 
"The Bridal of Triermain," 223. 
Commercial difficulties, 225, 229, 
passim. Reconciliation with Con- 
stable, 198, 226, 235. New purchase 
of land, 228. Offered the Poet-Lau- 
reateship, 231. Affair with Henry 
Weber, 233. Publication of " Swift's 
Life and AVorks," 234. "Waverley," 
237-243. Voyage to Orkney, Shet- 
land, and the Hebrides, 240. 

1815-1816. — Publication of "The Lord 
of the Isles," 246, and of "Guy 
Mannering," 247-251. Visit to Lon- 
don, 251. Meeting with Lord Byron, 
252. Carlton-house dinner, 254. 
Excursion to Paris, 259. Publication 
of "The Field of Waterloo," 266; 
"Paul's Letters," 270; " The Anti- 
quary," 271; "Harold the Daunt- 
less," 280; and of the first "Tales 
of my Landlord," 277. 

1817-1818. — Aspires to be a Baron of 
Exchequer, 282. First attack of 
cramp in the stomach, 283. Purchase 
of the lands of Toftfield, or Huntley 
Burn, 288. Visited by Washington 
Irving, 289. Publication of "Rob 
Roy," 293. His " Den " in Castle 
Street, 298. His position in society, 
296, passim, 304. Publication of 
"The Heart of Midlothian," 316. 

1818-1819. — Sketches of Abbotsford, 
320, passim. Sale of Copyrights to 
Constable for L.12,000, 334. Serious 
illness, 335, passim, 344. Publication 
of "The Bride of Lammermoor" 
and "Legend of Montrose," 342. 
Domestic afflictions, 346. Publica- 
tion of " Ivanhoe," 347. Sunday at 
Abbotsford, 351. 



648 



INDEX. 



1820. — Revisits London, 356; his Por- 
trait by Lawrence, ib.; and Bust by 
Chantrey, 358, 383, 384. Baronetcy 
gazetted in March, 359. Autumn 
at Abbotsford. — Hospitalities and 
sports, 360, passim. Visited by Sir 
Humphry Davy and others, 364, pas- 
sim. Publication of "The Abbot," 
373. The Blair- Adam Club, 375. At 
Walton Hall, and contributes to 
John Ballantyne's " Novelist's Li- 
brary," 376, 377. President of the 
Royal Society, 377. Publication of 
"Kenilworth," 378. 

1821-1823. — Visits London at the Coro- 
nation of George IV., 381. Autumn 
at Abbotsford, 385. Visit of Mr. and 
Mrs. Lockhart, ib.; of Mr. Erskiue, 
386. His " Lives of the Novelists," 
389. "Private Letters," 391. Second 
sale of copyrights, 393. Publication 
of "The Pirate," 394; "The Fort- 
unes of Nigel," and " Halidon Hill," 
396. Multiplied editions of his 
Works, 397. Exertions during the 
visit to Edinburgh of George IV., 
398. Visit of the poet Crabbe, 400. 
First symptom of apoplexy, 411. 
Publication of ' ' Pe veril of the Peak , " 
ib., and " Quentin Durward," 417. 
Third sale of copyrights, ib. Visit 
of Miss Edgewortk and Mr. Adol- 
phus, 420, 421. Excursion to Clydes- 
dale, 426. Publication of "St. Ro- 
nan's Well," 427. 

1824-1825. — Publication of "Red- 
gauntlet," 431, and the second edi- 
tion of "Swift," 432. Completion 
of Abbotsford arrangements, ib. pas- 
sim. Visit of Captain Hall, 435. 
Marriage of his eldest son, and settle- 
ment of Abbotsford, 437, 438. Visit 
of Constable, and projection of 
"The Miscellany," 438. Publication 
of " Tales of the Crusaders," 441. 
Excursion to Ireland, 443. Visited 
by Thomas Moore at Abbotsford, 
455 ; by Mrs. Coutts and the Duke 
of St. Albans, 457. Commercial 
alarms, 461. His Diary commenced, 
464. Retrospect of his connexion 
with Constable and the Ballantynes, 
467. 

1825-1827. — Catastrophe of his affairs 
in the downfall of Hurst, Constable, 
and Ballantyne, 472, 481. L. 10,000 
borrowed on Abbotsford too late, 
473. Extracts from his Diary on his 
commercial misfortunes, ib. passim, 
427 ; and on his domestic afflictions, 
ib., passim, 502. Miscellaneous ex- 



tracts, ib., passim. Executes a trust- 
deed, 481. State of parties in con- 
nexion, 482, 483. Publication of 
" Malachi's Letters," 486. Final de- 
parture from 39 Castle Street, 486, 
487. Illness of Lady Scott, 488, pas- 
sim. Publication of "Woodstock," 
491. First avowal of authorship, 491. 
Death of Lady Scott, 495. Proposal 
to him of matrimony, 499. Journey 
to London and Paris, ib. Com- 
manded by King George IV. to 
Windsor, 500. Return and removal 
to lodgings, 502. Public avowal of 
Authorship at the Theatrical Fund 
Dinner, 508. Publication of "The 
Life of Buonaparte," 511. 
1827-1829. — Publication of "Miscel- 
laneous Prose Works," in 6 vols. 
8vo, 515. Autumn at Abbotsford, 
514-523. Visit of Mr. Adolphus, 516. 
Controversy with General Gourgaud, 
519. Excursion to Ravens worth, 
Durham, and meeting with the Duke 
of Wellington, 521. Publication of 
the first " Chronicles of the Canon- 
gate," 523-526. Affair of Abud & 
Co., 524. Residence at Shandwick 
Place, and painful scene there, 527. 
Publication of the first "Tales of a 
Grandfather," 528. Joint re-pur- 
chase, with Mr. Cadell, of the 
Waverley copyrights for L.8500, 529. 
Christmas at Abbotsford, ib. Plan 
of the ' ' Opus Magnum," 529. Writes 
" Two Religious Discourses," 532. 
Contributions to "The Keepsake," 
533. Publication of ' ' The Fair Maid 
of Perth," 534. Visits London, 535. 
Returns by Rokeby, 538; and Car- 
lisle, 538. Excursion to Clvdesdale, 

540. Writes " The History of Scot- 
land " for Lardner's Cyclopaedia, 

541. Publication of "Anne of Geier- 
stein," 542. Publication and success 
of the " Opus Magnum," 544. Ner- 
vous attack — cupping, ib. Death 
and epitaph of Thomas Purdie, 545, 
546. 

1830-1831. Publication of "Auchin- 
drane," 547. Apoplectic seizure, 548, 
557. Publication of " Letters on 
Demonology," and fourth series of 
" Tales of a Grandfather," 548. Res- 
ignation of the Clerkship of Session, 
549. Offers of a pension, and of the 
rank of Privy Counsellor declined, 
549. A second overture of matri- 
mony, 550. Admonition to the citi- 
zens of Edinburgh on the reception 
of King Charles X. of France, 552. 



INDEX. 



649 



Visits of the French exiled noblesse, 
553. Unpleasant discussion with 
Messrs. Ballantyne and Cadell, 555, 
passim, 561. Second dividend to 
creditors, and their gift to him of 
the library, &c. at Abbotsford, 559. 
Fourth Letter of " Malachi " written 
and suppressed, 560. Residence with 
Mr. Cadell in Athol Crescent, 562. 
His last will executed, 564. Opposi- 
tion to the Parliamentary Reform 
Bill, 564. Insulted at Jedburgh, 565, 
570. 

1831-1832. — Apoplectic paralysis, 567. 
Election scenes at Jedburgh and 
Selkirk, 570. Last interview with 
Ballantyne, 573. Excursion to Doug- 
lasdale, 575. His last winter at 
Abbotsford, 579. Resolves on an 
excursion to Italy — a Government 
frigate prepared for his voyage, ib. 
Last visit to Smailholm, Bemerside, 
&c, 580. Farewell visit to Words- 
worth, 582. Departure for London, 
583. Arrival at Portsmouth, 587. 
Voyage in the Barham, 587. Arrival 
at Malta, 589; Naples, 590; Rome, 
594; Venice, &c, 596. Fatal attack 
on the Rhine, near Nimeguen — 
" the crowning blow," 597. Arrival 
in London — Jermyn Street, ib. Voy- 
age to Edinburgh, 599. Journey to 
Abbotsford, 600 ; and last days there, 
604-606. 

His death, 21st September, 606; fu- 
neral, 607 ; character, summary of, 
personal, literary, and political, 609, 
passim ; last will, and state of his 
affairs, 626. 

Monuments to his memory, 626-628. 
Portraits, 173, 535, 629-631. 
Busts, 358, 631. 
Statues, 540, 628, 632. 

Scott, Lady, of Abbotsford, in early 
married life, 79, 94, 101. Anecdote 
of, and Jeffrey, 160. Drawing-room 
anecdote, 263. Reception of Ameri- 
can tourists, 330. Illness of, 488, 
passim. Death, 495 ; and funeral, 
497. 

Scott's reminiscences of, 538. 

200, 205, 215, 234, 497. 

Anne, second daughter of Sir 

Walter, 289, 292. Anecdote of the 
egg, 331. The " Lady Anne," 365. 
Accompanies her father to Ireland, 
443, 448. Dutiful devotion of, 492, 
495, 496, passim. Letter from Car- 
lisle, 538. Accompanies her father 
to London, Italy, &c, 583. Death 
of, 623. 



Scott, Anne, second daughter of Sir 
Walter, 423, 492, 501, 545, 562. 

- Anne, sister of Sir Walter, 8, 9, 
79, 85. 

Anne, niece of Sir Walter, 494. 

Charles, second son of Sir Walter, 

accompanies Washington Irving to 
Melrose Abbey, 289. Sent to Lam- 
peter in Wales, 378; to Oxford, 434. 
Proposed for India, ib. Visited by his 
father at Oxford, 501. Appointed a 
Clerk in the Foreign Office, 528. To 
the British Embassy at Naples, 568. 
Receives his father at Naples, 590. 
Accompanies his father home, 597. 
At Abbotsford in his father's last ill- 
ness, 606. Attached to the Embassy 
at Persia, 623; and death, ib. 

Charles, second son of Sir Walter, 

497, 549, 559, 564. 

Charles, Esq., of Nesbitt, 607. 

Daniel, fourth brother of Sir Wal- 
ter, 9. Unfortunate case of, 192; 
and death, ib. Contrition of Sir 
AValter regarding him, 534. 

Mr., of Danesfleld, 12. 

Lady Diana, 71. 

Dr., of Darnlee, 322, 337. 

Lady Frances, 87. 

Hugh, Esq., of Harden, after- 
wards Lord Polwarth, 70, 607. 

Mrs., of Harden, aids Scott in his 

German studies, 70. Letter from, 
70, 71. 

592, 606. 

Henry, Esq., now Lord Polwarth, 

570. 

Janet, aunt of Sir Walter, 13, 23. 

John, Major, second brother of 

Sir Walter, 8, 209, 259. Death and 
character of, 271. 

John, Esq., of Gala, 258, 262, 354 n. 

Miss Mary, 606. 

Captain Robert, uncle of Sir Wal- 
ter, 15, 45. His bequest to Scott, 
and death, 115. 

Robert, eldest brother of Sir 

Walter, 9. 

Sophia, eldest daughter of Sir 

Walter, anecdote of, 289. Married 
to Mr. Lockhart, 359. See Mrs. 
Lockhart. 

292, 295, 344. 

Thomas, third brother of Sir 

Walter, 9, 85. His appointment in 
the Register House, 193. Letter to, 
204. Letter to, on " Waverley," 243. 
Death, 434. 

Mrs. Thomas, sister-in-law of Sir 

Walter, 9n., 85,597. 
Thomas, at Crailing, 12. 



650 



INDEX. 



Scott, Walter, father of Sir Walter, 5. 
Character of, ib., 44. Marries Miss 
Anne Rutherford, 7. Family of, 7. 
His death, 84. 

Mrs. Walter, mother of Sir Walter, 

7. Character of, 45, 271. Scott's 
letters to, 77. Her death and char- 
acter, 346. 

Lieut .-Col., the late Sir Walter 

Scott, eldest son of the Poet, anec- 
dote of, 200. At the foot-ball match 
on Carterhaugh, 267. A cornet in 
the 18th Regiment of Hussars, 345. 
Married to Miss Jobson, 438. Ga- 
zetted as Captain of Hussars, ib. 
Abroad for health, 544. Accompanies 
his father to Malta, Naples, &c, 581 ; 
and attends on him in his last illness, 
597, 606. Commander of the 15th 
Hussars at Madras, 624. Estimate 
of his character, ib. His death, 624. 

affairs of, after his father's death, 

626. 

Letter to, 379. 

289, 437, 445, 481, 497, 498, 525, 564, 

567. 

Mrs. Walter, now Lady Scott, 

446, 481, 624. 

Captain Walter, of Satchells, 609. 

William, Esq., of Raeburn, 12 n., 

607. 

Scottish aristocracy, Scott's romantic 
idealisation of, 613. 

jurisprudence, 156. 

Secrecy of Scott, remarks on the, 615. 

Selkirk, statue of Scott in, 628. 

Sutors o\ 267, 339. 

Senior, Mr., his Review of the Waver- 
ley Novels, 395. 

Servants, domestic, Scott's treatment 
of, 354, 355. 

travelling expenses of, 502. 

Session, Court of, Scott appointed as a 
Clerk of, 140, 144. Duties of the 
office, 146. 

Seward, Miss Anna, Lichfield, 99. 
Visited by Scott, 153. Her ' ' Poetical 
Works," 3 vols., 186, 197; and "Let- 
ters," in 6 vols., 198. 

Shandwick Place, Scott's residence 
there, 527. A painful scene at, ib. 

Sharpshooters, The Border, raised by 
Scott, 346. 

Sheffield knife, anecdote of, 262. 

Shepherd, Sir Samuel, Lord Chief- 
Baron, 415. 

Shillinglaw, Joseph, Darnick, 432, 571. 

Shortrede, Mr. Andrew, note by, 427 n. 

Mr. Robert, Sheriff-substitute of 

Roxburghshire, 51, 78, 370. Death 
and character of, 543. 



Shortrede, Mr. John Elliot, 52. 

Thomas, 370. 

Siddons, Mrs., 194. 

Mr. Henry, 195. 

Sidmouth, Lord, 332, 382. 

" Sir Be vis of Hampton," romance of, 
591. 

" Sir Tristrem," romance of, 98, 99, 
102. Publication of, 113. 

Skene, James, Esq., of Rubislaw, his 
first acquaintance with Scott, 72. 
Reminiscences of Scott, 133, 263, 348, 
479. Letter from Scott to, on Gra- 
ham's Island, 588. 

413, 505, 563, 580. 

Mrs., witness of a painful scene 

with Scott, 527. 

Spalding Club, 415. 

Speculative Society, The, Scott a mem- 
ber of, 39 n. 

Spencer, Earl, 142. 

Hon. W. R., lines of, 504. 

Spenser, 25. 

Stalker, Mr., 15. 

Stanhope, Lady Hester, 125. 

Steele, Mr. John, his statue of Scott, 
628, 632. 

Stevenson, John, " True Jock," 468. 

Robert, Esq., engineer, 240. 

Stewart, Alexander, of Invernahyle, 
34 n. 

General David, of Garth, 400, 405. 

Dugald, Professor of Moral Phi- 
losophy, 29, 71. 

Sir Henry of Allanton, 426. 

Sir James of Allanbank, 539, 630. 

Stoddart, Sir John, 94, 121, 589. 

Street, Mrs. Celia, 554, 554 n. 

Struthers, Mr. John, Glasgow, 171. 

Strutt's Romance of "Queenhoo Hall," 
169. 

Stuart, Prince Charles, monument of, 
at Rome, 594. 

Lady Louisa, letter from, on 

Jeanie Deans, 316. Scott's letter 
to, on the death of his mother, 346. 
Letter to, 390. 

87, 172, 390. 

Suicide, a case of, 504 n. 

" Superstition, Dialogues on," pro- 
posed, 418. # 

" Surgeon's' Daughter, The," tale 
of, published in November, 1827, 
523. 

Swanston, John, Abbotsford, 568. 

" Swift's Life and Works," 19 vols., 
published by Scott, 168, 186, 234. 

Dr. Jonathan, character of, 236- 

447, 609. 

Sydney Smith, Rev., 163. 

Sykes, Sir M., 414. 



INDEX. 



651 



T. 



Table Talk of Scott, 302, 361, 422. 

Talbot, Sir George, 590. 

"Tales of the Crusaders," 4 vols., 
435,440. Publication of, in 1825,441. 

"Tales of a Grandfather," first 
series, 3 vols. ; origin of their com- 
position, 510, 514, 522 ; published in 
December, 1827, 528. 

Second series, 3 vols., published in 

1828, 539. 

Third series, 3 vols., published in 

December, 1829, 543. 

Fourth series, 3 vols. (France), 

publication of, in 1830, 548. 

"Tales of my Landlord," first 
series, 4 vols., publication of, by 
Murray and Blackwood, 274, pas- 
sim, 279. See "The Black Dwarf," 
and "Old Mortality." 

Second series, 4 vols., 294. See 

"Heart of Midlothian." 

Third series, 334, 344. See "The 

Bride of Lammermoor," and "Le- 
gend of Montrose." 

Fourth series, 4 vols., publication 

of, in 1831, 583. See "Count Robert 
of Paris," and " Castle Dangerous." 

a spurious series of, announced, 

334. 

" Tales of Terror, Apology for," the 
first specimen of the Ballantyne 
Press, 89, 93. 

" Tales of Wonder," by Lewis, 81, pas- 
sim, 98. 

"Talisman, The." See "Tales of 
the Crusaders." 

Taylor's, William, translation of Bur- 
ger's " Lenore," 67. 

Terry, Daniel, comedian, Scott's inti- 
macy with, 196. His drama of Guy 
Mannering, 271. Pecuniary loss to 
Scott by, 438. Visited by Scott at 
the Adelphi, 501. Death of, 543. 

228, 284, 392, 395, 410. 

Walter Scott, 284. 

Theatre. See Edinburgh. 

Theatrical Fund dinner, Scott's avowal 
of authorship at, 508. 

"Thomas o' Twizzlehope," 53. 

Thomson, Rev. Geor-ge, tutor at Ab- 
botsford, 217. Death of, 622. 

—r- George, Esq., 312, 369. 

Thomas, Esq., Advocate, 193, 329, 

408, 415, 506, 507, 563, 632. 

Ticknor, Mr., of Boston, 630. 

Toftjiqld, lands of, purchased by Scott, 
and named Huntley Burn, 288. 

Torwoodlee, 332. 

Toryism of Scott, 557. 



Train, Mr. Joseph, poems of, 246; use- 
ful to Scott in antiquai-ian collecting, 
247. Suggestions to Scott regarding 
" Old Mortality," 280. Gift to Scott 
of Rob Roy's purse, ib., and the 
Wallace chair, 434. 

" Tally -Veolan," 61; silver bear of, 
62, 63. 

Turnberry Castle, 246. 

Turner, J. M. W., Esq., R.A., visits 
Abbotsford, Bemerside, &c, 580. 

" Twalmly, the great," 456. 

Tweed river, 138, 151, 208, 210, 291, 368, 
606; " drumly and dark," 519. 

" Two Drovers, The," tale of, pub- 
lished in November, 1827, 523. 



U. 



Usher, Mr. John, Toftfield, 369. 



V. 



Venice, Scott at, 596. 

Victoria, Princess, now Queen, Scott 

presented to, 536. 
" Visionary, The," publication of, 

346. 
" Visits of three days," 458 n. 
Voltaire, 360. 

Volunteer mania in Edinburgh, 130. 
Vulgar, its true meaning, 448. 



W. 

Walker, Admiral, Sir Baldwin, 588. 

Rev. Mr., Dunottar, 62. 

Helen, Scott's monument to, 586. 

" Walladmoor," tale of, 441. 

Walton Hall visited by Sir Walter and 
Mr. Lockhart, 376. 

Watch, simile of a, 565, 566. 

Watson, Dr. Thomas, 600. 

Watt, Robert, execution of, 65. 

"Waverley," 3 vols., 106. MS. of, 
203, 232, 237. Offer of Constable for 
the Copyright, 23J. Publication of, 
in 3 vols., in 18147237,243. Anecdote 
of its composition, 239. 

Waverley Novels, MSS. of, gifted 
to Constable by Scott, 434 ; award of 
their right of vestment, 528. 

48 vols. (The "Opus Maqnum "), 

with Notes, 529, 538. Publication 
and success of, 515, 551, 559. Scott's 
avowal of their authorship, 491, 508. 
Names of persons in the secret of, 
509. Copyrights of, secured, by 



652 



INDEX. 



joint purchase of Sir Walter and 
Mr. Cadell, for L.8500, 529. 

Whale, Mr. Lancelot, Kelso, 23. 

Wharnecliffe, Lord, 627. 

Wealth and rank, remarks on Scott's 
estimate of, 459, 460. 

Weber, Henry, melancholy case of, 
233. 

Wellesley, Marquis of, 444. 

Wellington, the Duke of, Scott first 
presented to, 260. Scott's admira- 
tion of, 264, 265 n. Style of de- 
bating, 422. Meeting with Scott at 
Durham and Ravensworth Castles, 
521. 

357, 410, 500, 556, 584. 

Wicklow, excursion into, 445. 

Wilkes, John, 200. 

Wilkie, Sir David, his portraits of 
Scott, 631. 

Williams, Rev. Archdeacon, 378, 580, 
607. 

Wilson, Professor John, visits Abbots- 
ford, 320, and Storrs, 452. 

332, 430, 628. 

Windermere, 453. 

Windsor Lodge in the Forest, Scott 
commanded to, 500. 

Wines, Scott's taste for, 308. 

Winstanley, Mr., auctioneer, 228. 



Wollaston, Dr., 364, passim. 

Woman, in Fife, misfortunes of a, 450. 

Wood, Sir Alex., 65, 67. 

Woodhouselee, Lord, 80. 

" Woodstock," 3 vols., 465; publica- 
tion of in April, 1826, 491. 

Wordsworth, William, Esq., visits Scott 
at Lasswade, 109. Scott's visit to, 
139. Visit to Storrs, 452. His fare- 
well visit to Abbotsford, 582. Lines 
from his "Yarrow Revisited," 583. 

225. 

Miss, 582. 

Wright, Thos. Guthrie, Esq., his remi- 
niscences of Scott, 154. 

William, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, 

462. 

Writings of Scott, their morality, 619, 
620. Genius, 620. Imitations of , 620, 
621 ; and tendency, 621. 

Wynn, Right Hon. C. W., 536. 



Yarrow River, 118, 119, 421. 

York, Duke of (1822), 410. 

Young, Charles, Esq., Tragedian, 194. 

Miss, of Hawick, 547. 

ideas, 447. 






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